In his write-up of Hot Chip's The Warning (#2) for Stylus' "Top 50 Albums of 2006" Evan McGarvey penned:
If The Warning’s intelligent, game phraseology (“What can you find in a drain?”) won’t win you over, peep the destructive, cleansing swagger: “I’m a mechanical music man, and I’m starting a fire. / Hot Chip will break your legs / Snap off your head / Hot Chip will put you down / Under the ground.”
As someone who has read Neil Strauss' The Game, I know that "What can you find in a drain?" is not good Game. You don't want to neg your competition, an act that implies a low estimation of self, instead you want to neg the girl. So Evan, if Hot Chip were in fact using "intelligent game phraseology" they would have said something along the lines of "What can I find in you, drain?" And if you want music with a "destructive, cleansing swagger", you should listen to Wolf Eyes not Hot Chip.
Honestly, I don't get it. Is it because Hot Chip are English? Cute? Play synthesizers? Pitchfork ranks "Over and Over" #16 in its Top 100 Tracks of 2006 and "Boy From School" #7 and The Warning at #26 on its Top 50 albums list. Stylus has "Over and Over" #23, "Boy From School" #11, with the album again at #2. First, I consider "Over and Over" a 2005 jawn, maybe even 2004 depending on how far ahead on the ssX curve you were when the song leaked. "Boy From School" is a good song, but it's not 5 stars. It's something every "indie" kid can identify with, the "We tried but we don't belong" line. However, Alexis myopically repeats the line way too often and by the end of the song it loses its initial, devastating punch.
Such diminishing returns resound on all of The Warning's tracks. They grab the listener's attention early, but by the halfway point they get stale. They each possess sounds and structures that remind me of a lullaby. So they are soporific, which can be useful, it just seems to me not quite as useful as something that impacts your life, makes you more awake, makes you see things more clearly. I truly don't understand how a narcotic can be a "top" record.
2 comments:
You'd be amazed at what makes good game. At some of workshops, we challenge our students to come up with openers using a random word from the dictionary. Works just as well. You still need game and technique to move on from that point, but the point is not to stress over the first few words.
The Warning has been on my iTunes all year and has 0 plays. Empirical evidence supports your argument.
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