One of my favorite bands, Hot Chip, is releasing a new album on Feb. 4 in the UK and a day later in the United States. It's titled Made in the Dark. The year is barely crawling -- not even walking, yet -- but this record has me by my ears, eyes and, most importantly, heart. In a word: affecting. I'm not ready to write about the record yet but I do want to mention 2006's The Warning. Some writers seem surprised by vocalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard's turn as balladeers on the new record, but I am not.
"Look After Me" comes in the middle of The Warning. The track’s backdrop is minimalist. Synthesizer blip here, warm guitar picks there. It’s a trance, and a trip – remember, this is the same band known for its dance beats and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Those elements are absent here, but the song’s emotional core fills the space exceptionally.
The chorus sounds like a deflated, and defeated, plead: “Look after me and I’ll look after you / That’s something we both forgot to do.” With the damage done, the song breaks down with the song’s most vulnerable couplet (“Every time I see your face I break down and cry / I see it in your family as they walk on by”). Cue the strings and it’s the beginning of the end, but should we be surprised? The final lyrics, which trail off sheepishly, make a case for this story being over before the drums were even programmed – “Come back to me and I’ll come back to you / That something we both can now not do.”
I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach when I listen to this song, and a lot of the songs on Made in the Dark. Part melancholy, part loss, part endearment, part ambivalence. That’s a lot of parts and it makes sense – these are complex compositions.
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