Hot Chip are in the business of crafting synthpop that exists somewhere between Kraftwerk and glam rock, with a good dose of kook to measure, a sound that for the most part provides pure, unadulterated joy. The English five piece led by Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard have been in this business for over two decades, and each time they’ve proved their longevity is no fluke. With 2019’s A Bathful Of Ecstacy, they expanded their reach further, delving into a sort of hallucinatory strangeness that rooted itself more in the pulse of house music than their usual funk and motorik. The ecstasy in question was thwarted somewhat by behind the scenes mishaps and the onset of lockdown, relegating the album to the ranks of great dance records that fizzled out too soon in the face of the pandemic. Freakout / Release is a course correction of sorts that looks to pick up where A Bathful Of Ecstacy left off but more so, it’s a cenotaph to sadness and the eventual journey to catharsis for Hot Chip.
The album deals with themes of pleasure and release, balanced by moments of poignant lyricism. It’s hinted at in the album’s title; Hot Chip are occupied with both the dichotomy and similarity that exists between notions like ‘freakout’ and a ‘release.’ To carry the weight of both these preoccupations, the band looks toward the tried and true catharsis of disco, tying this together with their signature synth funk. On Down, this dichotomy is made clear. Opening with a sample of Universal Togetherness Band’s disco-funk track More Than Enough, Hot Chip oscillate between pleasure and pain in Taylor’s lyrics, playing on the contradicting double meanings of “get down”; to feel sad, to boogie. Hard To Be Funky functions similarly, playing on the double meaning of ‘funk’ to fixate on the neurosis of trying to be a certain type of person for someone. The verses ooze through scuzzy, slowburn R&B while the chorus adds licks of funk guitar and bass. Part of the humour here is that most of the time, Hot Chip do in fact fail to be funky, instead cruising along at their usual languid pace. This sense of self-awareness and use of double meaning imbues Freakout / Release with a needed bit of wit and humour, a silliness that’s always been an inherent and refreshing part of the band who named themselves after a piece of fried potato.
Download and stream Freakout / Release here
Following Taylor’s lyrics, a timeline of sorts appears that traces a descent into misery. The title track, a noisy synthrock and motorik jaunt, introduces a sense of jagged frustration. Broken asks a question heard time and again in pop music, “am I still broken… can I still be fixed?” while the melodic techno of Time looks toward the trope of racing to stop the clock before an inevitable demise. Freakout / Release manages to visit these worn in tropes while somehow avoiding the reductive, mostly thanks to a clever and witty use of contrast. Broken, for instance, trots along a happy go lucky synth beat, while Eleanor, a song about a divorce, is easily the most sunny and optimistic on the album.
Freakout / Release essentially maps the journey back to oneself after a period of depression. It’s wryly honest when it needs to be, and gorgeously hopeful at its core. This hope makes for moments of stunning triumph; the soaring gospel passage on Miss The Bliss that breaks into dancefloor euphoric, the well earned tempo shift mid-way through Out Of My Depth. It’s here where the catharsis comes into play. Freakout / Release is very much an album that uses music itself as a remedy for despair, or as a lens through which to shift the gaze of despair altogether.
Watch the music video for Down from Freakout / Release below.
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