We’ve all experienced it before: the lost weekend. A blur of poorly lit clubs, vodka-tonics, gooey lipsticked kisses and toasts to acquaintances whose names we can no longer remember. Struggling to fit the key in the lock, grasping at the doorframe before you teeter over in three-inch heels. Where the only wisdom provided is what’s been inked on the washroom stall.

If Hot Chip’s 2004 debut Coming On Strong sounded like riding in a Maserati en route to the club while shouting obscenities out the back window, 2006’s DFA-released smash The Warning conveyed the jubilation of a well-played show. On Made in the Dark, the five-man UK outfit’s third album, they’re sounding a little weary, a little jaded, leaning unsteadily against the bar at the after-party. Buzzed and off-kilter at the beginning of the album, Hot Chip increase the pace with flashes of dancefloor exuberance until the moment of truth brings it crashing down — are these really my friends? Is this really my lover? And when are these drugs going to wear off?

If you’re expecting another demonstration of Hot Chip’s straddling the divide between their gangsta- and record-store-clerk-esque personas, Made in the Dark is a small departure, but an important one.
 “The starting point for Made in the Dark came from The Warning,” reveals Owen Clarke, Hot Chip’s guitarist and the group’s graphic artist, calling from a canal in Amsterdam.

 “We were doing festivals for a year, DJing shows and just gleaning from our experiences. We wanted more of a departure from the last album, based on the quieter aspects of what we can do. There’s live recording for a few of the tracks, in the studio and in the bedroom.”

Made in the Dark still has its share of killer dance tracks: ragga basslines commingle with cock-rock guitars, escalating into an intense, glittery electro-orgasm on “Bendable Poseable,” Afro beats and Living Colour metal heroics define “Hold On” and baboon screeches, tribal drums and a Todd Rundgren sample playfully rough each other up on the spastic “Shake a Fist.” There’s also “Wrestlers,” a quirky dance song whose metaphorical weirdness approaches R Kelly’s by punning on the relationship between half and Willie Nelsons. Hot Chip insist through it all that “I’m only going to heaven if it tastes like caramel.”

But having a pale, effete lad for a frontman might pose a challenge to one’s dancefloor-rocking demeanour. Alexis Taylor’s soft falsetto denotes womanly urgings, as he lulls in “Ready for the Floor”: “I’m hoping with chance / You might take this dance / You’re my No. 1 guy.” This awkward push-pull with baritone voice (and former schoolmate) Joe Goddard provides the sweetness to the group’s slow jams. Harmonizing in sync on “We’re Looking For a Lot of Love,” they’re sensual yet distant, like cousins playing at French kissing.

Says Clarke, “We see it more as a call and response. More than one guy’s opinion, a to and fro. Between the dynamics of masculine and feminine, there’s an openness that comes with two voices and two minds.”

And when they reveal that openness, their sensitive sides come out.

“When you listen to it, disco music is actually really sad. A lot of tracks focus on survival, never being able to dance again — it’s sad, but very compulsive. This [vocal duet] isn’t the newest trick we’ve done, in fact it’s not new at all, but we’ve always been keen on dance music, and keen on introspection.

“It’s strange that something that can be entirely euphoric can also seem entirely natural.”
In a nutshell, this describes Hot Chip’s approach to R&B, particularly the influence of Prince, who Taylor saw five times in London last August. Made in the Dark still has its share of danceable numbers, but this time the album also racks up five soulful ballads, including the luscious “In the Privacy of Our Love,” whose arrangement features nothing but handclaps on the offbeat, a piano that echoes dramatically with every plunk and an electric guitar accenting the sombre melody with pretty harmonies. “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love” tweaks the backing “oohs” well into the chipmunk register à la Kanye West, while spindly synthesizers are barely absorbed into the mix. And on the title track — part meditation on a relationship gone sour, part meta-description of their studio process — Taylor intones: “Since I stole this song, we have made a new start.” Insistently he repeats, “We were made in the dark.” Picturing the lads cramped in the West London flat where they recorded much of the disc, tuning their guitars in the kitchen, crooning into microphones ensconced inside walk-in closets, scanning worried glances or enthused smiles across piles of furniture, the song implies a connection between love-making and record-producing.

 Clarke explains that the slower songs came together in pieces, “as we all chipped in with melodies and ideas. Sometimes it’s quite structured, but it’s way more important to be able to mess things up a bit.

“For a track like ‘Ready for the Floor,’ it needed to be impulsive. Just cut it quickly, straight away, to get it down in all its various forms.”

They claim they’re just doing what comes naturally, but some idioms come out more naturally than others. Where does R&B end, and where do these five skinny Englishmen begin?

 “I think people shouldn’t get hung up on that,” Clarke replies. “There’s an argument of who’s getting things wholesale and not acknowledging it, but everyone borrows and steals from everyone. Whether you’re listening to steel pan bands from the Island or folk singers from the Far East, if you can incorporate it and it influences you, that’s your sound.”

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