Hot Chip at Sound Academy – 07/15/12

Photos by Brandon Gray, Review by Mike Gallagher
About as gangsta as Hot Chip will probably ever get, one of their older songs threatens;

“Hot Chip will break your legs.”

After giving a sweaty Sound Academy a good workout for the hips, ears and eyes, your legs would have to be broken NOT to be seduced into shaking a tail feather along with the English band’s thumping grooves.

The band recently released their fifth album, In Our Heads, and I’ll say that it’s their least immediate for me. Too fresh to have really sunk in, I’m not sure why I was skeptical for their return to town, really angry for missing their last appearance a couple of years ago with The XX. I have seen Hot Chip a few times before and I’ve always left sweaty and smiley.

Hitting the stage to a very appreciative audience that filled up two thirds of the venue, the band started off with a ramped up “And I Was A Boy From School”, which was unrecognizable until lead vocalist Alexis Taylor began singing. From there, the band gave the crowd little chance to collect themselves, continually going from one song right into the next with some banter, but nobody was there for a speech. We came to dance and the band was successful in feeding the eager-to-dance sweaty throng with high energy versions of “Don’t Deny Your Heart”, “Hold On” and “One Life Stand”.

The new material fit in nicely with the classics. Swathes of red bathed the crowd during a fantastic run through “Flutes”, my highlight for the evening, which morphed into the fist pumping romp of “Over and Over”. It was after this I had to move back a bit: It was too darned hot and I wasn’t in the mood to end the night as a pair of eyeballs on a pool of sweat.

Ending the main set with a meteoric “I Feel Better”, the band didn’t take long getting back to business with “Ready For the Floor” which somehow evolved into a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”, which was probably the low point for the evening. Cute, but absolutely unnecessary and threw the flow right off, but they did end off with “Let Me Be Him”, one of the highlights from In Our Heads.

Overall, the night was a perfect combination of one tight band that is no stranger to throwing one hell of a party for a gig, one excitable and appreciative crowd just as up for said party, great sound and lights set to stun.