Caroline Sullivan 

Hot Chip

Brixton Academy, London:Caroline Sullivan enjoys another victory for the most unlikely of pop stars
  
  


"Welcome to the Hot Chip show," shouts guitarist Al Doyle, as if priming the crowd for a Vegas cabaret act rather than five Londoners whose version of dance-pop gives equal ranking to the intellect and the booty. But he's not wrong in calling it a show: this gig, in front of one of their biggest crowds as headliners, is loaded with things to enjoy. There's a big difference between recorded Hot Chip and the live variety: highbrow synth-pop versus something primal and ravey.

Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard - little and large, respectively - are the putative frontmen, but this is an all-hands-on-deck affair, everyone swapping instruments and roving across the stage. Goddard half-sprawls across his keyboard, Jerry Lee Lewis-style, as he chants the staccato refrain to Wrestlers ("Half nelson, full nelson, Willie Nelson!"); Taylor rattles maracas and dances like nobody's watching.

The songs from their latest album, Made in the Dark, sound so much bigger here, pumped up into Balearic anthems, though they are powered by more than simple hedonism. And I Was a Boy from School, from the Mercury-nominated The Warning, is layered with stately synths that sound like the musical equivalent of a relationship-changing conversation. The blend of Goddard's baritone and Taylor's fragile, smaller voice is oddly touching, too.

Over and Over - which bequeathed us the line "Just like a monkey with a miniature cymbal" - is euphoric; the wonderful Ready for the Floor is heralded by the release of jumbo balloons. "Did you enjoy the balloons?" Goddard asks. It seems we did - another victory for the unlikely pop stars.

 

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