91Èȱ¬

This song is the latter. I feel like there should be a lot to say about it; certainly a lot goes on in it but it's slightly maddening in that it comes in so many pieces, several of which I significantly dislike, that I can't think of a way to approach it that isn't rather clinical and boring, ie: "this bit happens and I like it but then another bit happens and I don't like that and dear God that bit in the middle would only be any good if you were watching the leg guitar in the video, then they ruin the good first bit by mashing it up with some of the most annoying features of the second."

That sort of thing is dreadfully boring to read, though, so instead I'm going to talk about Emo In Disguise.* This is my favourite genre of music, being 'songs that are actually incredibly depressing but which are sonically happy.' There're some truly fine songs in this genre, all of them ticking over in a bubbly way that disguises their embitterment and disenchantment with the world. The sort of song that implies the musician is really actually having a mental breakdown this time. Eels not only master but virtually own this genre and there's plenty of other jolly excursions into depression in the world of shoegaze.

Although Hot Chip are called dance music a lot of the time, my listening of them is that they'd sit more accurately within Emo In Disguise; they're quite cheerful, sonically but there's usually something rather dark underlying the songs, at the very least. This song unfolds as a beautiful, summery dreamscape, very much as depicted in the video...

If you listen to the words, though, it's about a nightmare. The exuberance in the song sits oddly with the lyrical content, which is about being very confused and unnerved by the contents of your subconscious. This isn't a bad thing, as I said above, I really like it when bands do this a lot of the time and by no means is this is the problem here.

The problem here is that there is a glorious thing that sounds like 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', which constitutes the exuberant part of the song and there's a very, very annoying bit of guitar that probably shouldn't be in it at all and there's the beautiful, mournful opening.

Yes, it starts happily enough, but manages to blend the jauntiness of the guitar with the sadness of the vocals to create the a perfect Emo In Disguise cocktail - excellent! However, then the other parts start coming in, it all starts sounding a bit Architecture In Helsinki and it occurs to you that possibly this is all just a great big mess. The beat doesn't settle itself in for a lot of the song and it sounds in places like the band are just messing about in the studio, rather than deliberately mixing a song; which might be fine in some cases but here it just seems distracting.

I'd like to give this song a higher score for being unusual, which it certainly is both in terms of song structure and just the way it sounds, and also because that first part really does something to me. The rest simply doesn't work, though and I think it's that that's leaving me frustrated and unable to work out what fails and succeeds in it. It doesn't make it a bad song, it's not. But it doesn't make it a good one, really, either.

*And can we not get too overexcited by my use of the word 'emo' here, you know what I mean.

Download: Out now
CD Released: May 12th

(Hazel Robinson)