A bit more chirpy than the startling ‘Wut’ from a couple of years back, ‘Ensemble (Club Mix)’ – lead track from the Club Rez EP – is no less brilliant and sees Mr Unit morph his UK bass into UK slap bass funk. Like an electro Chakk. Or an unembarrassing Level 42 without Joseph and Emily in the backseat. Or, according to vague consensus in my kitchen, a driving scene from Ferris Bueller. So, a funky synth-sharding Yello that warrants the sand dance and a few shimmies from Junior and some rhythmic head-nodding from Junior 2 while she draws pictures of Moshi Monsters. I can’t help thinking that’s exactly what Girl Unit wants.
“All Hot Chip songs sound the same,” says Junior’s mum and then attempts to sing ‘Over And Over’ and ‘Ready For The Floor’ over the top. I don’t think that’s right. In fact I always argue they’re wildly variable – but, um, I’m just talking quality there, aren’t I? They have a certain mode and occasionally enhance it with a spine-shivering hook, that’s the Hot Chip way. A singles band? They’re probably the most consistent presence in my year-end charts but I can never go crazy about their albums, so yeah. Which makes it all the weirder that ‘Let Me Be Him’ is just an album track.
Half a dozen singles from an OK album and you don’t release the best track?
Junior’s kinder, if a bit avant-garde. She breakdances in slow motion then tries to imitate Hot Chip’s banks of synths on her Nintendo DS. Hey Alexis, Joe, Al, the others – you’re inspiring a whole new generation!
I don’t quite know where the song’s going. Let me be “him” – who? Your man? The guy with all the ideas? Everything I ever wanted to be? But words are just adornments when the central pull of ‘Let Me Be Him’ is a wordless chorus, somewhere between Enigma’s ‘Return To Innocence’ and New Kids On The Block’s ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’. It’s neither as hammy nor as airheaded as those though. It’s a euphoric, embracing release that draws us into Hot Chip’s circle, bathes us in the generosity that characterises all their best work. And this is one of their best.
It’s easy to insinuate a pop song into the global consciousness: take a low synth thrum/quiet storm verse that suggests a Kelly Clarkson explosion without the mess, surge off into clipped disco strings instead, nail a killer melody and – here’s the thing – write a lyric people will talk about (and remember). “Why is this crazy? People do it all the time.” It’s the cute conceit that makes everyone want to cover it – and that snowballs into a phenomenon. See? Easy. Carly Rae Jepsen is almost incidental, but she can do naive excitement, sounds like she’s feeling it and is the untarnished face of a novelty.
Sometimes everything just meets. I started Jukebox Junior as a fun way to get me writing – it worked, it grew, it changed my life – and back then I had a willing audience. Well, she was trapped in a bouncy chair and flapped her arms if she liked a bassline or simple, direct tune. But you can’t stop a person growing up. I never meant to brainwash her anyway, but of course she’s developed her own tastes. She’s a seven-year-old girl. She likes One Direction, she likes David Guetta’s fast-track hooks even more. I’m not saying she doesn’t enjoy some of the songs she’s introduced to here, just that the thrill of recognition always triumphs. She’s got a whole routine for ‘Call Me Maybe’ and that’s something I’ve never seen before. So there you are, maybe this place can become an exchange of knowledge as she engages more completely with pop and I continue to lose bits of myself to Steely Dan.
Naturally the “OI!”s go down well in a household of barely controlled chaos, but Junior collects her thoughts calmly enough to say, “I like the beat”. There’s a lot to like in Plan B’s lurch back from the New Boring brink. It tackles the UK riots in Janet and John style for the hard-of-understanding and mixes Shostakovich strings and tin drums to scintillating effect.
There’s a kind of livid satire here too though. The rich boy’s scorned, but the chorus is knowingly yobbish. B’s pretty unimpressed either way.
Would you believe it? Even when he was plain old for all we know heterosexual Frank Ocean, he was making records to prop you up and take notice. I know! ‘Pyramids’ seems like an age ago – possibly a side effect of it spanning millennia in a blood-twisting Heinleinian odyssey through Cleopatra’s personal development – but everyone was rupturing their own spleens in excitement at how damned amazing it was. And is. Ocean sings with total commitment and that peculiar connection he has whatever the subject, as centuries pass and slow jamz turn to beetling grooves. It’s a bold achievement from a bold man, and beams in here as an earthly representative of album of the year Channel Orange – we could’ve had Sweet Life, Thinkin Bout You, Forrest Gump, Bad Religion, even that glorious cover, but this is your handy Frank Ocean grab bag megamix.
Can’t help thinking M.I.A. has found her song and is sticking to it BUT I LIKE IT. I think I like it because of the reaction it draws out of Junior – she pulls the buffalo stance and a lightning flurry of rude boy gestures. Doesn’t M.I.A. do just that to all of us? She’s a Neneh with haphazard politicial bearings, and her songs are the Guardian Guide gone audio.
All this and “it sounds like a bad girl’s voice”. So Junior and I agree Maya talks it like she walks it.
Jai Paul seems to release records accidentally, like murky pop burps. This is sunk in electronic flotsam and jetsam but there’s a bright doo-wop swagger in its sub(marine)-R&B coils.
Thumbs up from Junior even though she can’t hear the first half because her two-year-old sister’s tantrum is drowning it out. Junior 2 likes “the noise”. Jai Paul, I think, rather than her crotchety sibling.
The lyrics are no less rhyming-dictionary than Chris Martin’s worst un-excesses, but Fixers just seem to have better source material. Yeah, generally it’s The Beach Boys. “Waikiki” sounds a bit Beach Boys.
Only kidding. Absolutely everything about this sounds like The Beach Boys except for the bits that sound like Animal Collective trying to sound like The Beach Boys. All this is catnip to me. But it’s only at 13 because sometimes – particularly when I’m playing along on my air piano, like I did here – a dark thought will rear up that ‘Iron Deer Dream’ could be a good Scouting For Girls song. I know that’s a concept beyond natural brain patterns, but there it is. It’s out there.
With no such listening parameters or prejudices, Junior says she likes it. She likes “the noise”. We agree it’s quite dense, the inevitable result of splurging all your best choruses on one song.
Why didn’t you remind me I was doing this? One song a weekday before revealing the No.1 on the 21st. Another broken manifesto pledge.
Usher’s like one of those billionaires now who does whatever the blazes he wants when he wants. So he can do a big guest vocal on a Guettathon and then dial it right down for this shard of Buck Rogers R&B. He’s squawking the hell out of his falsetto – which Junior represents via a scale of rising hand gestures, like a Hello Kitty t-shirt-wearing Mariah Carey – and lets the beats and bass drag and drop like a picture editor.
It’s tortured spook-soul that months on sounds better and better. Junior 3 lip-synchs with a pained expression and a sprinkling of vogues, to properly channel Usher’s emotional experience. Junior herself says he sings like a girl.
Jukebox Junior 