“And I Was a Boy From School”
from the album The Warning
2006
iTunes
Hot Chip emerged in 2004 with a weirdly inventive sound (comatose electro-soul) and a weirdly irritating persona (nerdy tragic clowns). This British quintet’s debut Coming on Strong was an oddball mix of sad lyrics, mournful atmospherics, Casio keyboards and ironic gangsta posturing. In the rap sendup “Playboy,” the vocalist Joe Goddard boasted of “blazin’ out Yo La Tengo” in a Peugeot decked out with 20-inch tire rims. The funky white-boy shtick often overshadowed the band’s ability to plunder elements from disparate sources — Prince, Devo, Aphex Twin, Beck, indie rock — and fuse them in a surprisingly fresh new way.
The Warning, one of the most anticipated electronic records of the year, is an artful attempt to be taken seriously. Hot Chip retires the Stevie Wonder jokes in favor of gorgeously wistful songs about impossible love and crushing vulnerability. Imagine the Postal Service, but far more danceable and quirkily experimental. “And I Was a Boy From School” is ridiculously catchy ’70s disco with heartfelt lyrics about lost innocence. “We try but we don’t have long/ We try but we don’t belong,” the vocalist Alexis Taylor sings in his affecting falsetto. Rueful but uplifting, it’s the perfect track for a 6 a.m. dance-floor comedown.
On the two-step-infused title track, the band threatens to “snap off your head” but sounds too dazed even to thumb wrestle. The second half of the album is lovely but overly sedate; it could use a jolt like the irresistible “Over and Over.”
A fuzzed-out, clap-along electro-punk anthem, the song has become a party staple since it was prereleased on an EP last year. In this tribute to the joy of dancing — or is that the joy of sex? — Mr. Taylor compares his partner’s technique to that of a “monkey with a miniature cymbal.” Hot Chip’s members have matured into great songwriters without losing their goofy spirit.