ALBUM: Hot Chip - Made In The Dark

Most of the tracks have been availiable on the internet for weeks, but Hot Chip's third album is the eagerly awaited comeback for the band that made you sing "Over and Over"... erm... again and again?

Where The Warning was more refined than their debut Coming On Strong, the same is also true of Made In The Dark. Opener "Out At The Pictures is reminiscent of "Careful", but... better. Similarly the next track and previous single "Shake A Fist" is more danceable and more fun than "Boy From School", with an impromptu game of "Sounds of The Studio" thrown in after a quick game of Sonic The Hedgehog. It kicks this album screaming into life with a somewhat grimey video game beat alongside some Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard's hypnotic vocals.

By the time "Ready For The Floor", obviously this album's "Over and Over" and soon-to-be-classic Hot Chip, beeps into life, you start to wonder why on Earth it took them three albums to make this one so good.

Then after what sounds like Rolf Harris' heavily distorted vocals for the intro of "Bendable Posable", the album starts to take a bit of a downward turn. Slow ballad "We're Looking For a Lot Of Love" sits uncomfortably in the album like the only sober one at the party who has to drive the others home. As does title track "Made In The Dark".

"One Pure Thought" starts out with a guitar intro that Orson would be proud of, it soon becomes a cross between Grandaddy and The Go! Team. It is a definite example of their apparent "rockier" sound, as is "Hold On", which sounds like what LCD Soundsystem would make if they didn't take themselves so seriously. However, it comes off less as a change of sound, and more of a redundant gesture about what could have been.

"Don't Dance" is another throwback to the barely danceable quirkiness of The Warning, while the final two tracks "Whistle For Will" and "In The Privacy Of Our Love" seem half-arsed attempts at making a point that Hot Chip can write serious love songs.

What you get then, is an album that builds on the band's previous work, but not in one complete direction. While the more layered sound and production works better with the sound than the sparse chip-tunes that featured on "The Warning", at times the songs become overloaded and seem to lose focus. A good group of songs, and chock-full of possible singles, this album doesn't flow particularly well as either a dance or indie album. Too quirky to dance to and to dancey to quirk to, it instead straddles both genres uncomfortably with some old fashioned R&B papering over the cracks.

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