The Beat Surrender

Receiving a Mercury Music nomination can be something of a poisoned chalice for some bands, who then either disappear up their own arses or get crushed under the weight of expectation surrounding them and either deliver terrible follow up albums or sink without a trace. Sometimes they do both. Hot Chip though seem to be the sort of blokes who saw the whole awards thing as a bit of a leg up, but in truth something of an inconvenience.

As such they have tonight sold out the excellent Leeds Metropolitan University venue, more of a concern for me at this point though is actually getting to the venue on time to see the band play. An eight-a-side football grudge match on the other side of Bradford was too tempting to turn down so all in all it was a bit of a hectic rush to get over to Leeds, not leaving much chance for a beer before hand…which certainly isn’t like me!

I make it in to the venue at about quarter to nine, with a two nil win to boost the evening along, I’m bang up for this gig now. The only slight doubt in my mind is that one of my friends from my university days had seen them the week before and described them as “good at the start, bit dull in the middle but an amazing finish”.

We fight our way to the bar (not literally but I’ve never seen it four deep at this venue before!) and due to the rugby scrum to get to the actual bar to put our order in, we take the option of getting two cans of Red Stripe (why do you only see this stuff at gigs by the way?) We then muse to ourselves why they get away with charging over £10 for what is essentially a four pack. The answer is self-evident in that we’ve just happily paid it!

We head down into the packed venue and before we’ve really had time to settle the lights have gone down on the equipment on stage and you know the band are due on stage any minute. They arrive to a polite, yet understated cheer (certainly wouldn’t go as far as rousing anyway) from the crowd and they are straight into the first song then.

The first impression of them is that they look like a real strange collection of people thrown together, each could have their own doll and stage name like the Spice Girls, so from the right to the left of the stage for me you had, nerdy chip, gay clubber chip, geography teacher chip, normal chip and dj chip! They’ll never win any style awards but if they keep producing albums like The Warning they’ll feature in plenty of end of year polls.

As the set progresses it seems that my friend has got things pretty much spot on, the first few tracks are good and get the club heads going, including a brilliant And I Was A Boy From School. Just as they get everybody going they then slow things down to such a point that you do start to get a bit fidgety. They close though in fine style with two or three great tracks and then the ever superb Over and Over which raises the roof, especially as they stop it once and then kick it back in again for another chorus.

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