Tag: love

Posted in Album of the Month, Music chat, New Albums, New Tunes

November AOTM: Joy Crookes – Juniper

Posted on by GuyHornsby

Yes, Joy is back, and isn’t that a good thing to say?

It was way back in January 2022 in Episode 19 that we first welcomed the south Londoner to the podcast, and I’ve been anticipating her next move ever since her brilliant debut, Skin, found its way into my life. That album – Crookes was already hyped and was nominated for the Brit Rising Star award in 2020 – truly put Crookes on the map, a heady mix of twenty-something south London life as a mixed-race women – growing up with an Irish father and Bangladeshi mother – painting nights out wrapped in cigarette smoke and JD and cokes, the 35 bus, parties, family, flirting and love, all set against deeper topics of mental health struggles, identity and nods to the good and bad of multicultural Britain. Trading on smoky soul, r’n’b, 60s pop, dancehall, as much of a melting pot as the city she calls home. It won the then 22 year old plaudits and a Mercury prize nomination.

It was a firm favourite in Hornsby towers; songs are still on my daughter’s playlist. It has been in my life ever since, a post-Covid breath of fresh air that seemed to have London as a backing singer, reminding me fondly of the place I called home for over two decades. The album was toured relentlessly over the next two years, with talk of new material in the studio, as well as Crookes’ appearance at fashion shows, festivals and even a Lexus advert, enjoying her new-found fame and bringing her own down-to-earth energy wherever she was. It was hard not to see her having the time of her life and not be there vicariously with her. And I wasn’t begrudging one single moment. She was the star we could all get behind.

But where was the new music I hoped for? It took until January of this year when Pass The Salt dropped: a new single, as yet decoupled from any expectation of a new album. And it felt fresh. Tricking us with a filtered soul intro, before dropping into heavy-drummed and bass-driven verse which felt like a statement of intent: “listen to this / I’ve got plenty to get off my chest.” Joy was back, but where had she been? This was a different tip to her smoky, ballsy, fun-filled sound of 2022. This was more weighty, direct, and pointed to a hardening of the now 26 years old artist: “I got thick skin on these bones, ah / When a bitch don’t rise to rumour / Get the words stuck in your throat, throat, throat”. It also featured a rasping verse from Compton native Vince Staples, elevating it and nudging away from expectations in under three minutes. As a comeback, it asked questions: what was next, what did Joy have to say this time, and was there an album coming soon too?

A second single followed soon after, again with a big name verse to shift thinking further: this time enlisting grime superstar and actor Kano for his verse in Mathematics. A more soul standard track this time, but with the grime OG’s vulnerable words standing out with power and poignancy alongside Crookes’ lyrics and pushing things forward (as well as starring in a memorable video for the release, below). On the surface, it felt like a song about unrequited love, but it also felt like something heavier loomed in the background. It raised the interest of both new directions, and what lay behind Crookes’ next step. After third single – the up-tempo pop of ‘I Know You’d Kill‘ in March – I finally got the news I was hoping for: a new album, Juniper, was due in September, almost four years to the day from her debut. It felt a long time, and as the media rounds started for that release, things became clear that it hadn’t been a simple ride for Crookes since she got on the hamster wheel.

For all the joy of the new record – to which we’ll come – there’s significant context to Juniper’s journey from studio to airwaves. In the middle of her rush of fame, things fell apart. The late nights and VIP rooms had been fun as she found her way up through the next tiers of the industry, but it all felt disconnected, causing Crookes to step away and question what was important to her. Talking to Grace Dent in her Comfort Eating podcast, she laid bare how hard it had hit her: “.…it was a very dark time. I was extremely unwell. Not in a good place. I had to face those mental health issues: after the high, I flew down. I was lonely and isolated, like I had no connection to anyone.” If it all sounds bleak, it was. Right at the point where she should be releasing a second album, there was questions around her own health, and whether it would actually happen.

While plainly laid out in its lyrics – opener Brave is an early statement: “I’m so sick, I’m so tired I can’t keep losing my mind / I want to be brave, I want to be in love / It’s time I stopped running away. I should stay” – Crookes had to contemplate confronting the reality of where her head was at to even get to the studio. Telling DIY mag: “Touring and everything is a great distraction but I obviously had something bubbling up for years in the background I’d decided not to deal with, mentally.” Sparked by coming out of a relationship, she realised her behaviours “were actually traits of someone with very specific traumas”. She had to choose between the party and her soul, and it came down to an easy choice, but a harder road: “you can fuck around, but the play time’s gonna end at some point. No more Alaïas or Tabis, you’re gonna have to put on your fuckin’ Salomons and go on the hike!” It’s what makes the joy of Juniper even greater, given what was overcome.

I’d already been playing the singles to death through the summer – the fast-paced 60s pop of I Know You’d Kill (penned about her love for her brilliant female manager) and the sultry Carmen, eschewing the simple love and loss for the myth of unattainable beauty – and they continued to come thick and fast. The modern trait of releasing half the album in tracks that’ll get the airplay and streaming numbers does dilute the mystery of the long player. But what was revealed early didn’t remove too much from the final product. It was so good to see Crookes back, and I was ready to play Juniper on repeat on day one, enjoying how much the singles change feeling as part of a greater whole.

It was such a bright, accessible listen. Crookes always had a skill for enveloping, classy soul and pop that – whatever the subject matter – you could tap and dance too, and her own vibrancy came through in every line. Brave’s dusky overtones were classic Crookes, but it felt laced with sadness: “Sometimes it’s hard to smile / When no hurt feels against us”, the vocals as rich and heady as ever, with its tales of love and the fear laying yourself open to someone else. Her wider palette of influences – not just Nina Simone or Sarah Vaughan, but also the first wave of Bristol’s trip-hop scene and Joy Division – seep into the album, and the first half of singles-heavy tracks, reward with layers. Flying through Pass The Salt – a track that sees Crookes call out an ‘arsehole woman’ who’d spread rumours about her – and Carmen‘s playful musings on beauty and expectation. Flitting effortlessly between genres and styles that revolve around her London soul and street sounds, she plays on her heritage – Perfect Crime’s video was shot in her mother’s homeland of Bangladesh, with Crookes goofing around on the river and the back of motorbikes, seemingly happy to be out of the other side of her trauma – and confidently wears it on her sleeve.

There are more musical departures that nod to a widening of horizons, too. For all of some reviewers seeing First Last Dance as a more derivative dance/pop track, it’s a firm favourite of mine already, and shows a willingness to move away from the template (and features one of my favourite lyrics on the album – ‘Feel like Travolta / Each time I hold ya’. And far from a breezy theme, like much of the album, it had a deeper narrative, relaying the anxiety felt during the recording process. As she told DIY Mag, “I was like, ‘my chest at the moment, you know that scene where they stab [Mia Wallace] with the needle because she’s taken way too much cocaine?’ They were like ‘yeah?’ and I was like, ‘well, that’s how it feels’.” She grins. “They were like ‘well, that’s a lyric!’”.

The production on the album really worked too. It was – to me – a bit more varied, but warm, full of layers, and above all, sat back to let Crookes’ voice shine through. The two work in harmony, and there feels like an added richness to her voice too, with a few years (and a few cigarettes) more, it’s so full of character. The album was a blend of studio talent: Blue May, her most regular partner, producing Skin before this record, was back. Harvey Grant also returned, having worked with Arlo Parks previously too. Tev’n – a collaborator with Stormzy – debuted, as did Chrome Sparks. With Crookes finding a way to blend al of this together, it sounds fantastic, but never overdone.

Of all the tracks that have found their way into my head, Somebody To You is the album’s zenith to me. Perhaps the simplest song on the record, it just aches with sadness and thoughtfulness (and features a sublime Sam Fender on backing vocals). Alongside the companion video, it feels like a classic love song, but once again the truth is more uncomfortable than that. Talking to Glamour magazine, she told how it actually hints at a familial relationship that had broken down in the interim and caused Joy to rethink what her life looks like without her reliance on that relative. And that also points to a bigger narrative about being a woman: “It’s such an important question for women trying to define their full adult selves outside of relationships that no longer serve them,” Crookes said, nodding to the line “‘Who am I when I’m out of your sight? I want to see how we look apart”, as “what the album really is about.”

The themes may more broadly always bring in love in all its raw detail – Perfect Crime’s title nods to the joy love after heartbreak – and Mathematics tells of unrequited love, with its verse recorded secretly by Kano, so moved was he by the song, and A House With A Pool, a tale of an abusive ex-partner and for Crookes “a shit year when I ground myself down into the smallest version of myself”. At each turn, there is something deeper running through Juniper than simple heartbreak. Where Skin was as much about love, identity, family and a love letter to her south London homeland, Juniper feels closer, more introspective.

It’s the sound of an artist that has grown up in the spotlight, suffered and questioned the outcomes of the very thing she loves, and come back to her centre of family and friends, to find connection and a way out of the trough. She is willing to put it all out there, and there’s a bravery and determination that makes Juniper rise above the simple follow-up on the same template and marks a step forward. Closer Paris muses on the effect of a relationship with another woman, Crookes calling out “one of the best songs I’ve ever done.” There’s a freedom to her admission that it didn’t matter to her being with someone rather than worrying about her internal voice’s worries: “Kinda wanted you to be my girlfriend / Didn’t wanna fuck with no more Catholic guilt / When it comes to pride / I’d raise my heart to a girl or guy”. It feels a distance from the person she was then, a willingness to embrace the emotion. I was stood in the crowd at Glastonbury in 2022 when she wept tears of joy at where she’d come to, and I think of that now and where this album will take her, a smile on my face.

Despite so much of the record being underpinned her exposure to fame and its pitfalls, it’s never painted in a morose or self-involved way. She is willing to reveal warts and all, and call out her own failings as much as her struggles. The tunes soar so well, and her lyrics are so sharp, clever, and zippy, that you feel you are always on Crookes’ side, even as she’s telling you her darkness of the past few years, while asking you not to pity her. She values her ‘reset’, and the people around her, from her family and pre-fame friends, to her manager Charlotte Owen, for whom I Know You’d Kill is a celebration of. There’s something beautiful about the fierce independence of two women, fighting back in an industry built on the male gaze.

As much as the subject matter weighs – and rightly so – on Juniper, it doesn’t flatten the melodies, and it’s also possible to let the album wash over you, dancing to the sound, as much as deep listening, headphones on, and taking in all of its majesty under the surface. And albums working on two levels are what we all love, right?

What Juniper gives me is a follow-up from a British songwriter of class, wit and honesty that feels every bit as good as the debut, with four more years of life, emotion, understanding and recovery poured into it. For all the struggles that Crookes has gone through, her determination to come out of the other side and bring that through to us in her music is a gift for all of us. In her early releases, there may have been lazy ‘next Winehouse’ comparisons, but I can’t think of another artist like her around, so steeped in London, and the clash of cultures that have made her who she is. We are lucky to have her and I hope you’ll see some of what I feel about Juniper in your own experience.

Posted in Album of the Month, Music chat, New Albums

AOTM | June | Lucy Dacus | Forever Is A Feeling

Posted on by GuyHornsby

I can’t remember who introduced me to Lucy Dacus. But a skim of our Whatsapp shows that while we all slept on it in 2023, Nolan was the first to alert us to it in April (perhaps from his legendary ‘Folk’ playlist). So, hats off brother, because that’s why we’re talking about Lucy Dacus’ fourth solo album, Forever Is A Feeling, and how I’ve come to bring it into the summer light. So, let’s rewind a little, then.

Back in early 2023, I’d not even heard of any of the trio of the acclaimed indie/rock/folk supergroup Boygenius. I’d been aware perhaps of Phoebe Bridgers in passing, but the album was a definition of a ‘how did we miss this?!’ record when we got to our 2024 Album of the Year picks for the podcast. In the November, it was catching fire, and by the time we recorded the podcast, it was climbing slowly into Top Tens. It hadn’t quite wrapped itself around me at that point but into early 2024, it really took off for me. 42 minutes, 12 songs – the TINH golden ratio – and some of the finest crafted songs of that year, however late they came to us. From the banjo-infused delicate feel of Cool About It, to the perfect rock of $20. It made me want to know who this trio was. Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker were doing things I needed to hear, in ways I didn’t know I wanted. I played that album into the ground last year. it was the perfect confluence of female voices that played across the genres and had so much interesting to say about being a woman and being queer in the 2020s. They seemed to be having the time of their lives.

But this isn’t about the band, it’s about Dacus. Back in March, I had interest when Forever Is A Feeling was trailed, but I had no expectations of this weaving its way into my head and heart so much. I love when an artist that’s either new to you or you don’t have a big history with comes out of the wings to catch you unawares, and this feels like 2025’s for me. I was familiar with her voice from The Record, and how it sat so nicely within that frame, but on her own it was a focus that really called out the Virginian’s talent for melody and songwriting, and a skill with the guitar that took me by surprise. All the parts were there, fully formed: from the classical intro of Calliope Prelude, Big Deal was the first one that really had me: its simplicity of strummed guitar, brushed percussion and Dacus’ rich but expressive voice, talking of unrequited love come into the open, and it had this connection that I can’t quite explain when you feel a song is written for you. As I got to know the album, it felt so open, wearing its love and emotions large across its 13 tracks. And if you connect with that, it’s a powerful drug. Then I read the backstory and it all seemed to fall into place.

I’m slow to the context, for sure. But casting through news stories of the past and I realised there’s been speculation and rumours around the trio’s creative bonds ever since they got together, and whether there was anything more. And while it feels trite to buy into this stuff – they certainly enjoy how they dress, perform and make music together – because, really, in 2025 why can’t it just be a group of female friends and musical partners making amazing records together, finding out that Dacus and Baker were in a relationship earlier this year suddenly added layers to the music that I already felt a real connection to. Because when you reframe the songs on this album to that backdrop, it feels all the more relevant, meaningful and, above all, beautiful. Not because they should be telling us what is absolutely their business and theirs only, but because they did, and it felt right to do it. “It’s been interesting, because I want to protect what is precious in my life, but also to be honest, and make art that’s true,” Dacus told the New Yorker recently. “I think maybe a part of it is just trusting that it’s not at risk.” And we are all the beneficiaries of that trust.

So an album more generally about love, loss, infatuation, lust and life, became (mainly) about this. And it lifted it up to another level. The lust and sexual energy of Ankles (with this wonderful version on Jimmy Kimmel) took on a new meaning, and the gentle insistence of Best Guess transformed into a warm hope for future lives together. Mogdiliani’s intonation that “you make me homesick for places I’ve never been before” is a sweet sentiment. If it wasn’t coalesced around a person it may feel a bit mawkish, but I think there’s a truthfulness and openness to the songwriting – which clearly feels different after the fact – that makes this something special to me. The album isn’t all soft focus love songs, for that would be unfair on an artist of the talents of Dacus. Talk fizzes with scuzzy guitars and angst over, presumably, the ending of the previous relationship before Baker: “I didn’t mean to start
Talking in the past tense / I guess I don’t know what I think / ‘Til I start talking.” The balance between the start of something new and the end of the previous affair also looms large here.

There’s some wonderful turns of phrase throughout, with For Keeps lamenting “If the Devil’s in the details and God is everything / Who’s to say that they are not one and the same? / But neither one of them were there / In the mezzanine cheap seats, or waking up in dirty sheets.” In these moments, Dacus almost feels as if she’s close by, singing directly to you. The title track is a more urgent-sounding confession about feelings hidden coming into the open, with a lyric that’s half put-down and half hopeful statement: “Yeah, you’re smart / But you’re dumb at heart / And that’s a good start.” Come Out’s chorus has been washing around in my head for weeks. There are some less strong notes, especially the duet with Hozier, Bullseye, which feels the most derivative on the album, but quickly blown away by Most Wanted Man and the closer Lost Time, a hell of a pair of final cuts. The album hangs together loosely and easily, like an old jacket. I’m sure we’ll talk programming but I can’t think of things that feel particularly out of place, and it flows so easily into multiple runs. I feel it’s been here for years already.

It’s not just a simple album about one person though. Because Dacus and Boygenius inhabit something bigger in the cultural landscape. A trio of queer women, unashamedly themselves, proud of who they are and enjoying playing with those identities, should feel normal of course, but the country they are from is in a strange era. Right now they are the sort of creatives that the unhinged White House hates, and willing to campaign for gay rights, abortion and trans communities is not a simple choice to make for everyone in this decade. The more I read about them, the more I respect, admire and adore them, and Dacus’ music and the layers it has makes me wish I was on board when her debut No Burden came out in 2016. Perhaps, when I read some of the press, the fact that I’m only starting out now, may be why I see it more favourably than some who got in at the ground floor.

This album has had some – to me – odd reviews in a number of places that decry its lack of edge and softness compared to its predecessors. How it’s more rounded and content, perhaps disappointment that a promotion to a major label – from independent darling Matador to big time Geffen – has smoothed out a few too many of those rougher edges. I think – to me – there’s also another factor in play: that when you’re singing and writing about yourself, but that world is private to you, you can talk about the stories and images and weave them with all the colour you feel is needed – real or imagined. But when your relationship is public – and she must have written and completed the work knowing that was where it would end up and how it would be framed – there’s a different angle to that, surely? Where your public and very well-known partner is the centre of many of the songs, would you be as visceral, as brutal, as colourful as before? Only Dacus can know this, but when you are in love and that album is largely an expression of that, critical appraisal of that must feel more personal and I feel there’s something to that here. It’s Dacus’ (and Baker’s) truth, and no one else’s.

For sure, having listened to it recently, I certainly get that her debut was more guitar-led and spiky – but that was not the overriding style itself – and she’s sung of pain, grief, love, and loss to great effect on her past work, but I felt that there’s light and dark on all previous albums she’s done. I find it a quirk – perhaps confirmation bias – that a good number of the less favourable reviews I’ve read this time have been written by men. Laura Snapes’ excellent piece for Pitchfork is an exception, that while it ruminates on the albums style, it also posits that the record’s biggest transgression may be the statement of queer ‘contentment’ and I very much like that idea (though of course that should not be a thing).

And I’m sure that’s a thought I’ll carry into the podcast too. There’s a critical narrative for sure, and while I acknowledge that and see it, I adore it all the same. Journalists can sift through the album against a back catalogue and critically appraise changes in tone and style, I am just here to say I plain old love this record.

The question is, will you all?

Posted in Album of the Month, podcast

AOTM – October – Hot Chip: Freakout / Release

Posted on by GuyHornsby

For anyone that’s ever seen me at a Hot Chip gig (yes, even that one) and just how excited I get by that band, it’s probably about as much of a surprise as hearing I picked Metronomy’s Small World for Episode 21. But however much Hot Chip’s 8th studio album, Freakout/Release, felt like an obvious pick for me, it’s not the slamdunk that it might seem. For starters, it presented me with a quandry for the podcast: I’m an unashamed Hot Chip nerd, a lover of the band since their first album in 2004, so how objective could I be and frame this as a discussion that gave the subject its due without letting personal feelings overbear it? Also, there were other choices in play, not least the amazing Cheat Codes from pod favourites Dangermouse and Black Thought. It’s such a dazzling album with all the vintage feels, oddball samples galore, and conscious, layered flow (not to mention some amazing guests) that it’s a 2022 Top 10 shoe-in. But does anyone want to listen to 4 guys agreeing how good something is for an hour? I wasn’t so sure.

So Hot Chip wasn’t just a lazy pick, and the more I listened, the more it raised a lot of questions that are relevant to my music DNA, and why we do the podcast: how we grow up with bands (and them with us), how artists develop over the years, how and why we connect with them and the effects on music of the inevitable march of time. After all, when I’ve listened to every one of the band’s albums dozens and dozens of times (and for this album, all 8 in one day, just for research purposes!) and seen them tour every one of them since The Warning, I am probably reasonably qualified to consider those questions. To me there’s been subtle but noticeable changes in tone and lyrics that bring me back to those queries each time. For me – if we’re putting it out there – there’s 3 ‘acts’ of Hot Chip: the spiky, jolting first two albums, then an almost impeccable run from Made In The Dark, via One Life Stand, to In Our Heads, and then further shift from Why Make Sense? to the current day. From oddball nerds (a press label as much as anything, and one they probably hate) to underground darlings to a British institution with a dedicated global following. All of this despite only one UK top 10 single (Ready For The Floor) and album (Made In the Dark). Enter their first new album in 3 years, do things feel different? It’s a cliché to say lots has changed since their previous album, A Bath Full Of Ecstacy, arrived, but lockdown and the pandemic has put an indelible mark on society, so it’s not a surprise to hear the band talk about its influence on Freakout/Release and how that made them strive to search for a sound that they wanted to play live.

I probably should admit there’s part of me that connected with the band back in the mid-00s as I saw them as not trying to be cool, just doing their thing, looking like a strange collection of ‘guys with synths’ and making some amazing music, but without any real ego. I was never (am never, will never be) one of the cool kids, a perennial fan of music, DJs, art, clubs, gigs, festivals that wanted to get on the inside but was always peering (metaphorically and literally, sometimes) over the fence at the action, trying to get behind the rope. Hot Chip were one of the first bands I’d seen that looked both totally normal but also really cool, but much more like me and people we knew. I doubt they liked the ‘nerd’ tag (who would?) but against all of that, managed to cultivate a furrow that was very much their own, musically and beyond. Yes, they’ve done themes and colourschemes for some tours and albums, but a lot they’ve done just by being themselves. And how can you not be cool by playing every festival out there, DJing in all the good clubs, and seemingly getting to do it your way throughout? It’s the dream, right? (and disclosure, I’ve meet a few of them in a musical and fan capacity, and guess what? They’re lovely, sound people, so do meet your heroes, at least sometimes).

So what do we know about the album? Like its predecessor, it’s an album where the Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Al Doyle, Felix Martin and Owen Clarke have allowed external producers into the inner sanctum, and like A Bath Full, it’s yielded interesting results that aren’t always visible at first glance. While Bath Full was lauded as positive statement on connection, joy and music’s ability to foster both of these things, (with the late Cassius and production wizard Phillipe Zdar‘s influence writ large and hailed by the band, alongside xx producer Rodiadh MacDonald) the new album feels, at first listens, as a bleaker affair. Where Bath Full wrapped up the listener in a cloud of positive warmth and gentle, existential questions, the backdrop to Freakout/Release’s creation seems to have tipped the band over into far a more introspective, fraught and anxious headspace (if the track titles were your first entry point, then you may baulk at ‘Down‘, ‘Broken‘, ‘Not Alone‘, ‘Guilty‘ and ‘The Evil That Men Do‘). But as with most of Hot Chip’s work, it’s never as binary as this, and while heartbreak preceded its recording – with long-time live addition Rob Smoughton’s near-death illness and Zdar’s passing – and global turmoil surrounded it, hearing the band talk about its making would bely the obvious assumptions that this is a bleak, lockdown album. It’s also interesting hearing Goddard and Taylor talk about the influence of live cover Sabotage over its making, something played out in both the rawer feel of some tracks and also the distorted, dry vocals used, which feels far out of the Hot Chip comfort zone.

Because while Goddard and Taylor have been open about how much the shadow of lockdown loomed over it, a two-pronged narrative emerged: the desire to make songs that they wanted to play in front of festival crowds, even if they didn’t know when that would happen, and a search for connection in music when isolation ruled our lives. Elemental stuff, and very much in tune with how I want to experience music (perhaps a big reason I have always chimed with their work). And on wading in, there are a few things that don’t feel like classic Hot Chip to me immediately: Down’s leaning closely on a sample – 1:42 into the Universal Togetherness Band’s More Than Enough – the isn’t unique (Why Make Sense’s Flutes is the obvious previous nod) to the band but having it on a lead single seems a departure when it’s so core to the song’s feel, which is as disco as they’ve ever got, and as full of Doyle’s guitar licks that it could be a different band to the likes of Shake A Fist’s jagged electronics (even though when you relisten, guitars come up a lot more than I remember across their catalogue). The title track also feels much more raw and messy than their polished, electronic pop sound, with the band passing the unfinished track through the brains of legendary duo Soulwax to get the right vibe. It’s a raucous, scuzzy, almost punky track, that seems very much at odds with the band’s sound, and, as it turns out, a real outlier. You’re left feeling it could’ve been so much more interesting to hear more of this, but would it dilute Hot Chip’s ethos so much they risk alienating the core of devoted fans that have been with them for so much of the journey? We’ll never know. But it’s a step into the unknown somewhat. And I like it.

There’s also a question about how much Goddard and Taylor’s hegemony has been loosened and how much solo and other band projects can and have influenced the band’s own output? Al Doyle’s ‘other band’ being LCD Soundsystem and the influence he’s now had on James Murphy’s outfit (writing a clutch of songs for their last album) has – to me – markedly led to his guitars and a ‘rockier’ sound come more into Hot Chip’s world in recent albums. When LCD split, Doyle and university friend Felix Martin formed New Build and scratched another musical itch. Taylor has released many keyboard and piano-based solo work and Goddard’s work as 2 Bears, and a solo album has solidified his own musical identity away from this outfit. Has a more egalitarian approach meant a richer tapestry for Hot Chip’s work, or diluted some of the magic that earlier albums found? Does the recording of Freakout/Release in Doyle’s new studio (‘Relax and Enjoy’) mean the band is more content to experiment or is that just a factor of being together for so long? This ‘third act’, from Why Make Sense certainly feels like something has changed. The question is where this leaves the band itself, and how those that buy the music feel about it.

So for this album, all isn’t quite fallen into place, for me. The problem perhaps with the programming of the album from here is that with second single Eleanor – a straight up PSB-style shimmering pop banger and earworm about love and loss – sandwiched between the two other ‘radio tracks’, it leaves the album with a challenge to maintain the momentum after 3 singles grab all the attention at the start. And perhaps this is where others have struggled with it, too. When I’ve dived in, I already know the 3 tracks off by heart so I either want to get past them to connect with the rest of the album, or when I have gone from track 1, it’s like a ‘before’ and ‘after’ between the opening stanza and the rest. It feels a particularly odd thing to do, and while it’d be reductive to wonder if there was a worry about the album’s staying power had led to this track order, I find it hard to entirely shake. And that’s a real shame, as there truly is a lot to like from Freakout/Release, but it’s hard to manoeuvre around this music ‘speed bump’ for a long while.

‘Broken’ is a beautiful song that talks about how to reach out and help someone, Taylor’s wistful vocals intertwining with the leads, and mined from real-life experience of feeling helpless at others’ suffering. It’s definitely a good example of where the band is: talking about emotion, heartache, wrapped up in lush, layered instrumentation. They’ve always done this heart-on-sleeve well, and it’s particularly well-twinned with Taylor’s vocals, but in recent albums, it’s more overt and none more so than this one. They seem ever more confident perhaps after years of doing this, to be upfront with such subject matter, even if it’s at odds with the tracks’ musical feel. This dissonance – to me – is brave, but often effective for the band (think ‘No God‘ on the previous album or ‘One Life Stand’). As a result, ‘Broken‘ isn’t a song that you’d feel would be in their early work, but there’s still a lineage back to the 80s synths that inspire them. With every album, there’s still nods to their touchstones: Prince, Kraftwerk, Robert Wyatt, Prefab Sprout or hip-hop and r’n’b from the 90s. It’s just that with maturity and age their sound is much more layered and complex than the austere, almost angular feel of Coming On Strong or The Warning. I have hugely enjoyed this progression (however subtle) but I also feel that some of that pure dancefloor energy has ebbed away as a result. But at 47, it’s not as big an issue as it may be for trying to hold the attention of the kids, coming up from behind.

‘Not Alone’ is a great example of Goddard and Taylor’s lyrics and vocals in motion together. Ever since they started making music together at school, there’s a certain alchemy that feels very much theirs. I can’t think of another band in the UK that employs two male vocals that operate mainly in falsetto or high ranges they way they do, and it’s one reason that – despite so many claiming others sound like them – they still sound so unique to me, inhabiting their own musical space so effectively over 20 years as others come and go around them. I get that it’s also a reason that some find them grating; if it’s not a style you can get on with, it’s going to be hard to love them (like I do, at least). It’s also another track that feels quite introspective and, well, sad. And perhaps this strain through much of the record is why it may be beautiful, and may envelop in the headphones as fantastically-constructed electronic pop music, but may ultimately not quite have the propulsive zip of previous albums.

‘Hard To Be Funky’ is a track definitely I wasn’t sure of at the outset: the lyrics jarred a bit and it’s ‘Alexis’ slow one’ (think White Wine and Fried Chicken, Slush, Look After Me, In The Privacy Of Our Love) but as you get past the pace, it’s an interesting question about the meaning of ‘funk’ – music that’s so core to what Hot Chip do, and that is so associated with sex and sleaze, and how this means so many different things to so many people. I also really like how Lou Hayter comes in as a point of difference, and it’s a collaboration that just works and brings something different. I always enjoy how any band opens up to this (look at how effective Porridge Radio’s appearance on Small World worked for Metronomy). ‘Time’ is about as ‘dancefloor’ as the album gets, which is – at least partly – a shame, but I’m glad it’s on the album. It does pick up the pace where the album starts to feel a bit out of gas. Similarly, its segue with ‘Miss The Bliss‘ is needed to keep this up. It’s actually a really lyrically simple track that speaks to supporting others – again borne out of the solitude of lockdown – and feels much closer to Goddard’s own solo work than anything else on the album, even featuring Goddard’s brother and various family members in the group for the choral vocal. It’s an uplifting and sweetly personal moment.

Perhaps I can’t entirely get on board with the programming – and am unable to think exactly how I’d change it – but I do salute individual tracks. ‘The Evil That Men Do‘ is another outlier for Hot Chip: an overtly ‘political’ song about toxic masculinity and male privilege that starts as a light call-response between Alexis and Joe ‘beg for forgiveness / bear witness / be humble‘, before opening up with piano and a lovely bridge that drops into Cadence Weapon’s flow, which is another welcome collaboration. A nod back to Posdnous’ much loved verse (by me, at least) on ‘Love Is The Future‘, from Why Make Sense? With a band that’s so steeped in hip-hop as influences it’s great to see it literally land on an album, and makes me wish there was more of it in their catalogue. It’s also another example of really dry, effected vocals (with the title track) where it’s an attempt to strip back the angelic tones of Taylor past the halfway mark as the track almost splits in two as Cadence’s flow leaps in. The contrast is so strong it’s almost jolting, but it really works for me.

The album closes with two of the stronger tracks: ‘Guilty‘, which feels like a live classic already. It leapt out on first listen and still sticks out. Musing on the difference between dream and waking consciousness, it’s playful and fun lyrically ‘when you see a finish line / does it end up your nose‘? There’s a real 80s funk feel to this, and it carries into the uplifting closer, ‘Out Of My Depth‘. Hot Chip do have a thing for statement closing tracks (Why Make Sense, or Bath Full’s No God, not to mention One Life Stand’s Take It In) and it’s an attempt to perhaps take the darker subject matter of Freakout and land on a more hopeful note, that sadness and emotion is not to be avoided but you can come out the other side intact: “Then I’m in my darkest room / But I’m careful not to enjoy it / All too much, but as I leave / It will be helpful to have endured it.” In many ways it’s one of the biggest nods to this being a far more ‘grown up’ album than their early work, and god knows we love ‘grown up pop’ ™.

So what to make of it this against their canon and – more importantly – the rest of music in 2022? It’s left me feeling slightly adrift of where I’d expect to be. Is this the first album I haven’t fallen for yet from the band? Will I eventually do that? Does every band have a finite shelf life and is this where we are finally heading here? Locking into the themes of how the band themselves can keep making music that has meaning to them – and to us – it genuinely feels strange not to have fallen for a Hot Chip album after a few listens for the first time. Even uncomfortable. I question myself, as much as I do the music. Does it say more about me or the band? Is this just a really good album but sits in comparison to other fresher, more inventive albums this year? It can’t hold a candle to Steve Lacey or Joy Crookes, or the power of Kendrick? But does that matter? Doesn’t it just really matter if it connects and I like it? And life life in general, am I just overthinking it?

For me, music has always been about feelings and connection. Every album before this from the band has had tracks that I feel deeply about. Some of them for reasons I can’t even put my finger on. Brothers is a track I can’t help but well up when I listen to. Written by Joe about this brother, I can’t obviously help but reference my own twin and how much he means to me. Or Night And Day’s little ‘Iknowyou’rethinkingaboutme’ line makes me want to jump out of my chair (and their videos? I could write a whole other blog about their genius). Or Let Me Be Him (from In Our Heads) chokes me up. And Melody Of Love cannot fail to moisten my eyes. Forget logic, it just subconsciously works. I cannot tell you how and it does not matter. Music is about connection for me, so to listen to Freakout/Release and think ‘this is lovely’ for a good chunk of it, doesn’t quite feel enough.

And there’s another, bigger, more important factor at play here: the band is older, lives have changed, families and other responsibilities, as for all of us, emerge. How much of that feeds into the music directly and how much of it is osmosis? It must surely permeate. None of us are in clubs like we used to be, and yet I miss their really big dancefloor bangers (as I also understand that it’d be odd for nothing to change). Think One Life Stand, or Hold On, or perhaps Shake A Fist, No Fit State or Huarache Lights. And I don’t really see that vibe here, for all the musical lushness and inventiveness. Again, does that matter? I still love dance music, and clubs – even if I’m rarely in them – and so having a Hot Chip album that doesn’t quite bang as much as others feels, well, sad. But perhaps it’s another facet of developing as a band, getting older, shifting subtly into areas that feel more removed from where you were ten years ago. Who am I to tell the band it’s not their right to do that, but is there a point where it starts to depart from me, personally? Because I know that even if this album never quite gives me the feels I’ve had before, I know when I see them live, it’ll be as good as it’s ever been with all their catalogue behind them. Because, they are a fantastic live band. It’s often overlooked but to me they are one of the best live bands around, an expanded 7 piece (with Smoughton and drummer Leo Taylor) that can recreate anything from the studio with added vigour and snap on tour. Where will I be? Down the front, singing, shouting, and crying, and I’d never have it any other way.

I worried when I first heard this album and read the press it hit me that perhaps this could be their last album? Maybe it was a reaction to some of the lyrics “Music used to be escape / Now I can’t escape it” (on the title track) and talk of the difficulty that surrounded making it, and perhaps leapt unguardedly to the wrong conclusion, because these things are never to be taken as read, as Taylor has talked about this time around. I don’t think that’s the case any more (especially given their packed touring schedule) and I sincerely hope they are around for a long time yet, but it’s hard not to worry about myself and my taste here as much as the band’s output and wonder where this will all end up. Because I’ve fallen in and out of love with bands before, but this is the first time my adult life coincided with a band I’ve loved from the start (I was ‘only’ 29 when The Warning arrived, and it’s been almost 20 years now since) where I’ve still never seen that desire wane. When that’s finally loomed, even if it’s not how it’ll play out, it shakes you and who you are.

So while Freakout/Release may not have left the mark on me of some of the other Hot Chip albums of the past, I’ve come to appreciate it far more lately than I’d first expected. It’s also made me think about how our relationships with bands and their music evolves, and perhaps accept that nothing lasts forever. That if things do change, I’ll always have a huge catalogue of tracks to pick from and revel in that still hold their lustre to me. I don’t get even half the number of albums I love from this band with many others, so it’s also given me some welcome perspective about great it is to love a band for as long as this. And that’s why I’m going to take the album at face value, enjoy it for what it is, stay in the moment for as long as I can, and look forward to the day when I see them live on their next tour. I’ve been lucky to have them around.

Hot Chip – Freakout/Release
Posted in Album of the Month

May: Hot Chip – Why Make Sense?

Posted on by GuyHornsby

It’s a bit late this month, but I hope it’s worth the wait, Brothers. And before we get started, there’s a disclaimer here: I’m an unashamed Hot Chip fan. Since I heard The Warning back in 2006 I’ve been hooked. Back then they were a different proposition: new kids on the block, making music that didn’t really sound like anything else I’d listened to (and even more so on Coming On Strong, their 2004 debut, which I consumed the same year) and the antithesis of both the rock and electronic ‘bands’ I listened to as well. They didn’t look like pop stars, they didn’t sound like pop stars, (jesus, comparing them to Radiohead or Arcade Fire seemed odd, still does in some ways) but Over And Over clicked with something in me that I didn’t expect.

Once I got into the album, it’s clear they offered something more than everyone else: a sound that went between full-on dancefloor banger (Over And Over, No Fit State) r’n’b-tinged love songs (Boy From School, Colours) sprinkled with lovely oddities that just seemed like they weren’t trying to be anything at all other than a band just recording what they wanted (Don’t Dance, The Warning, Careful). I saw them at Lovebox that year, they were a strange experience. Playing ridiculously early on the main stage, they were a nervous-looking cadre of nerdy synth geeks, almost not engaging at all with the crowd but making a decent fist of studio-produced songs that didn’t always crossover to the live arena.

Nine years later comes their sixth album, and maybe their best yet – Why Make Sense – and in some ways they’re completely different and yet hardly removed from the collective that endeared me all those years ago. Where have they changed? Well, despite their great hooks and quirky album tracks The Warning, breakthrough that it was, felt like a band still finding their feet a little, and as a live proposition they were still green. Now, they are the finished product: one of the most inventive bands around, making records that are catchy, but intelligent, poppy but heartfelt and emotional, and somehow still sounding, well, like Hot Chip, even though in any album they’ll cross through five different genres. And live, they’re one of my favourite bands ever. Part of this is down to their development as a live act, whether it’s coming out of their shells as frontman/men, becoming more confident of their sound, honing their work from the studio to the stage much more coherently, and now crossing the tricky rubicon from making an album with synths, drum machines and all sorts, and making that sound heavy live. More of that later.

In reality, they’ve taken a step forward at each album’s release, but Made In The Dark was a watershed: they didn’t succumb to temptation to try and make hits, they just did what they did, with a few more touches, a few different synths, but never moved away from making music they wanted to. That album had more standout tracks – One Pure Thought, Ready For The Floor and Shake A Fist – all the while not treating their fans (old and new) like fools, and making repeated listens bear fruit each time. And One Life Stand was as fully-formed as they’ve got up to now. I love each album and track in their own right, but until Why Make Sense I didn’t know if they’d better it, however much I loved In Our Heads.

But Why Make Sense is a revelation. It’s Hot Chip, undoubtedly, but it just feels like another leap forward. There’s reasons for this – admitted and assumed – but for a band that’s been making records for over a decade, and in that ever-changing electronic/pop arena it’s hard enough to stay relevant and keep fresh. I think Hot Chip have managed it as they’ve never been interested in doing anything ‘cool’, and so they never have to beat anything but their own expectations. But the band’s ever-growing side projects – Al and Felix’s brilliant New Build, Joe and Raf’s 2 Bears, Alexis’ About Group, B&O, Atomic Bomb Band – have clearly let them scratch an in-between-album itch that means each new album means they’re fully focused and also more relaxed at the same time. For a band that have been going so long, (in modern terms for non-rock) they seem still to be the best of friends, and while Alexis and Joe are the hub of the band’s music and lyrics, there’s a gentle creep to a more collaborative ethos that can only be positive. But above all, they still manage to put their finger on the themes that have kept them bubbling from the start – love, friendship, the world they live in, growing old – that they manage to convey in such rich, listenable ways. Why Make Sense combines all of these brilliantly.

Musically, it’s as close to an actual band as they’ve ever been. If that seems throwaway, it’s not. But touring and their transformation into a mighty stage entity, means they wanted to make an album that could translate most directly to a live experience as they ever have. No 5 synth parts, two 909s, three guitars. With regular drummer Sarah Jones and multi-instrumentalist Rob Smoughton (The Grosnvenor) in tow on tour they are able to realise anything in their back catalogue, and their ‘warm-up’ tour this month, which I caught at Oval Space in London, was the best gig I’ve ever seen of them, and I’m well into double figures. Musically, and live, they are on the up, something that’s a rare path when you’ve been making music as long as they have.

There’s so much to love about Why Make Sense, which – to a Hot Chip first timer – would encapsulate everything they’re about as a band. Huarache Lights is an absolute banger of an opener. And all honed around fat leads (and a vocal phrase that can’t but help make me smile about the Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah, was it meant? who cares?) and lyrics that exalt getting ready, and putting on your Nikes. “Machines are great but, best when they come to life, you can’t put your finger on the pulse of the night” comes out of the second verse and is just lyrically as punchy as ever. Yet straight away they’re questioning their place in the world in their 30s, are they still relevant? “Replace us with the things that do the job better”. This song alone makes a mockery of that, but the fact they’ll openly bear such an obvious insecurity in their opening song to a new album just endears them to me even more.

There really isn’t a weak song on the entire album. Every one feels considered, meant, and all fizz with life, energy, emotion and intelligence. Love Is The Future’s staccato beats hark back to their early days, jaunty and lush, with careworn lyrics, until De La Soul’s Posdnous leaps out. Not afraid to get a few friends enlisted if it works. It doesn’t feel frivolous, and it’s a song that Green Gartside’s skills are lent to the string arrangement. Cry For You feels like a cover of a nervous r’n’b record mixed with house music – so much of their roots are in the genre, something that’s always felt obvious and therefore unique to them – but the lyrical and music interplay of Goddard and Taylor’s vocals is wonderful, with the arpeggiated synths and blocky percussive hits proving there’s nothing as simple as a Hot Chip album track.

Started Right is a surefire future single. Flipping from shuffling percussion and funk bass/notes into a mighty string-led hook it’s pure pop, impossible not to sing along to or smile while you’re doing it. But just as they’re wandering into all killer territory comes White Wine And Fried Chicken: a song that no one else could make as well. The title, the sampled vocals, the balladry wrapped up in a modern-day love song. Dark Night follows, arguably another standout track. Where five years ago you’d have had another banger, this is a guitar-led (Doyle’s influence growing as it has done over the past three albums) gem. One of the best tracks I think they’ve written, and leaning to so many of their influences, painted with their own palette. The chorus and walking bassline is sublime, as is a rare lead for Joe’s vocals. It sounds like a slice of electronic, Eno-produced pop that would’ve graced the top ten in 1986, combining their ability to write a great tune, stand with one foot in the past and the present, and write lyrics that invite you in and make you think.

Easy To Get sounds great live (much more vibrant and raucous than this slick love song) – Doyle’s licks to the fore again – and again the vocal interplay between Joe and Alexis is wonderful, at first stripped out, then – much like Started Right – lush layers added on the bridge and chorus. “Why don’t you take a rest, talking something we’ve outgrown”, again taking aim at their perceived age and place in the musical landscape. Need You Now is more proof of the polymorphic nature of their songcraft. I’d listened to it with the brilliant video a few times thinking it was a song about an imagined break-up, but it’s more resonant than that: it’s about terrorism, war, the world that’s just, well fucked up. “Never dreamed I could belong to a state that don’t see right from wrong”. It’s startlingly relevant to the next five years (did they have a bet on the election? it’s not hard to understand given Al’s recent appearance on the World At One, but they are never overt about their themes and the hammer is always in a silk glove) and shows them as a band with a conscience, not just a heart.

So Much Further To Go is as close to something that feels a little unplaced, but its lovely harmonies are a wistful sounding (isn’t that just Alexis’ voice, whatever he sings?) entree to the album’s title track. Why Make Sense – like so many late-album belters before it (think Hold On, No Fit State, Take It In, Ends Of The Earth) – is a tour de force. Distorted guitars and reverbed percussion with Alexis’ voice dual-tracked and strong, it feels as much rock as they’ve done anywhere recently. It lifted the roof off Oval Space, (many of their songs are purposely beefed-up live, and to startling effect) and is almost a mission statement of their career: “Why make sense when the world around refuses? A winner lost is one who always chooses”. Hot Chip have always gone their own way, and if anything Why Make Sense shows they’ve been right from the start. They may never play Wembley Stadium, but you also know they’ve never aspired to that. They are a great festival band without the need to play the biggest arenas, and whatever the setting, there’s an intimacy to their music and lyrics that feels like it needs walls around it to truly resonate (which is why they always seem to blow away Brixton).

This is a triumphant record by a band both aware of and comfortable in their surroundings more than ever before. They may be older, but they’ve matured. They may seem like an outlier, but they’ve always been there, knocking on the mainstream’s door. And they’ve never sounded as good as this. That isn’t a negative on their previous work, it’s a description of just how good Why Make Sense is. It’s rewarding from the off, and I know I’ll still love it in ten years. I can’t wait to see what they’re making then.