Hot Chip – One Life Stand (2010) [DFA] // Grade: A-

Amidst the lyrics of “Slush” Alexis Taylor floats the words, “Now that we’re older / There’s more that we must do.” After three releases that ran heavy with electropop and filled the dancefloor, Hot Chip have grown up and branched out on their fourth release, a mature, pared down affair that favors light disco, house and tropical rhythms.

While Taylor’s falsetto often felt at a distance on past albums, cold and restrained over a dance beat, One Life Stand‘s slower tempo allows Taylor’s vocals to embrace their sensitive and delicate side, finding a fitting environment in the album’s “power of love” theme. “Alley Cats” is an absolutely glorious assertion of maturity for the band. Collaborator Fimber Bravo’s steel pan drums echo a well-crafted, chill disco beat atop which all three vocalists glide with a clarity and collaboration unheard of from Hot Chip until now. “Slush” is One Life Stand‘s (and for that matter, Hot Chip’s) most unexpected moment, a ballad accompanied by piano and backed with a vocal warm-up scale. It’s so uncharacteristically Hot Chip, that you can’t help but lean a curious ear. It’s far from the album’s strongest offering, but as a singular surprise in the tracklisting, it feels thoughtful.

Don’t worry, Hot Chip have not completely left their dancer side behind. Both “Hand Me Down Your Love” and “We Have Love” are upbeat additions with fierce disco beat lines. Unfortunately, set against the slower tempoed album cuts, the vocals tend to drag, suggesting maybe we’ll get some remixes stronger than the originals down the line. The title track, “One Life Stand”, is textbook Hot Chip for the diehard fans. Taylor’s voice is a bit monotonous, but the steel drums and vocally warped chorus (that I swore up and down the first few listens had to be Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips) provide more than enough newness to keep the track from being boring.

One Life Stand isn’t perfect, several of the tracks are unremarkable filler, but you come away from it proud of Hot Chip and glad you’ve been able to share their journey from inception to the first hints of the mature powerhouse they’re surely on the road to becoming.

- Scrooge McFuck