Half of Hot Chip returns with a bold new album, Paris in the Spring, yet it sadly lacks a distinct voice.
Let’s call it what it is from the start. While Hot Chip today seems reduced to a somewhat hollow shell, resigned to repeating a clean and slick electro-pop formula well away from the joyful experiments of an album like, say, Made in the Dark (2008), the magic and the stubborn melodic challenge that defined the best early Hot Chip records now seem to lie mainly in the solo projects of its two core members—Alexis Taylor or Joe Goddard. This is precisely where one should look to find a hint of that DIY magic, that melodic bite, and that pop stubbornness. The proof is in Alexis Taylor’s sixth solo album, Paris in the Spring, and his honeyed, almost tearful voice, instantly recognizable, which goes all out with a roster of guests that dizzy the senses: Nicolas Godin of Air, The Avalanches, Étienne de Crécy, Pierre Rousseau of the now-defunct Paradis, and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, to name only a few.
Across these ten new tracks, Alexis Taylor fully embraces the role of a disillusioned crooner set against electro-pop, a mood that the author aptly describes as “synths left out in the rain” and which shines on numbers like Wild Horses with its vexed melodies, Colombia in the form of tearful ambient, or On a Whim with Green Gartside of Scritti Politti venturing into reggae-dub territory that the eighties cult act loved. Unfortunately, this formula starts to feel repetitive for the rest of the album.
Playing Tricks on the World
Inspired, according to its creator, by Lynchian aesthetics, the album is full of red herrings, starting with its title. Paris in the Spring does not unfold a sonic feverish homage to the capital, as Malcolm McLaren did with Paris (1994), but instead ventures toward the broad plains of a fantasized Americana, refracted through electronic music. In the vein of the sublime Out of Phase, where actress-singer Lola Kirke from Nashville, seen in David Fincher’s films, duets with Taylor, the track’s garage beats take on New York’s edge and are dressed in the most striking country hues imaginable.
Each of the ten tracks seems to play a little game of deception, much like the album’s title itself does not point to Paris but to a line from a cognitive test used to illustrate how our brain reads and interprets information to speed things up. “You have to seek out those doubles meanings, or what lies beneath the surface,” explains Alexis Taylor. “Sometimes the audience wants someone to tell them, ‘What is it?’ And I refuse to do that. Great things can be discovered in music when you truly listen. No one needs to be told what it is, otherwise why create something so simple? Be ready to be surprised, to discover something new, and let the music resonate within you.” A record haunted by melancholy, weighed down by half-light atmospheres and bearing a certain gravity, Paris in the Spring also carries the flaws that come with its ambitions, risking a certain monotony in composition, despite the host of guests behind a concept that is a touch pompous. Can Alexis Taylor do better? Certainly.
Paris in the Spring (Night Time Stories). It has been out since March 13.
