A Bath Full of Ecstasy is a compelling album that has some of Hot Chip’s best dance tracks to date, but it often falls back into comfortable territory for the group.
Whenever a new Hot Chip album is announced, I always wonder: “what’s the ‘banger to mild track’ ratio is going to be?” This isn’t to suggest that the band are formulaic, but they do tend to juxtapose songs that bring down the house with ones that gently soothe the house. For every “Ready for the Floor” there’s a “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love,” and for every “I Feel Better” there’s a “Brothers.” Even their 2015 album Why Make Sense? started with the dancefloor-friendly “Huarache Lights” but quickly reached the hipster café-friendly “White Wine and Fried Chicken.” Few electronic bands other than perhaps Metronomy embody this contrast in energy so well.
When Hot Chip announced their seventh album A Bath Full of Ecstasy, they released its first single “Hungry Child” and an accompanying music video that can only be described as “the most meta thing ever.” While it was easy to get distracted by the video’s narrative around a millennial hipster couple, the song “Hungry Child” itself seemed like a promising introduction to the album. It was packed with heavy house beats, handclaps, and an explosive chorus that instantly marked it as one of the most intense tracks Hot Chip has ever made. Could A Bath Full of Ecstasy finally be the elusive Hot Chip album that was nothing but bangers?
Well, no. A Bath Full of Ecstasy is a compelling album that has some of Hot Chip’s best dance tracks to date, but it often falls back into comfortable territory for the group.
A Bath Full of Ecstasy is actually the first Hot Chip album with outside producers, Phillipe Zdar of French house duo Cassius (who tragically died two days before the album’s release) and Rodaidh McDonald who worked on the xx’s three studio albums. For better or worse, however, it doesn’t sound markedly different from anything the band produced themselves. The album’s second single “Melody of Love” is a choice example. It’s primarily guided by frontman Alexis Taylors’s soft-spoken vocals, but keyboard chords and scattered synthesizer notes gradually build until a snare beat kicks in after a minute and a half. It’s got a decidedly upbeat feel, complete with a sample of a gospel preacher exclaiming “time will bring peace, time will bring love,” but its chorus contains the contrasting line: “I always seem to hesitate/Too little always comes too late/There is a sound that resonates/A melody of love.” It’s a good track overall, but it strongly echoes the band’s earlier opener “Thieves in the Night” from 2010’s One Life Stand.
The slower songs on A Bath Full of Ecstasy are the strongest ties binding Hot Chip to their past, and dominate the final third of the album. “Why Does My Mind” stands out thanks to its psychedelic effects, but its moderate tempo reins it into monotony. Synth player and co-vocalist Joe Goddard takes the lead on “Clear Blue Skies,” which ponders existential dread over a muted drum machine to make their most decaffeinated song since Made in the Dark’s title track. Even the closing track “No God” occasionally hints that it might reach the climactic highs of In Our Heads’s dramatic penultimate track “Let Me Be Him,” but instead falls closer to that album’s less exciting finale “I Have Always Been Your Love.” On one hand, the band have really mastered electronic subtlety, and their mellow songs tend to be growers – think of the best parts from early albums Coming on Strong and The Warning. On the other hand, well, there’s a reason you probably don’t remember “So Much Further to Go” from Why Make Sense?
The real reason you’re probably here though is for the dance tracks, and fortunately A Bath Full of Ecstasy delivers on this part. While “Hungry Child” steals the show with its vigor, tracks like “Spell” and “Echo” are worthy contenders for runner up. Interestingly, Hot Chip originally wrote these two tracks for pop star Katy Perry, but reclaimed them when they didn’t make it onto her 2017 album Witness. “Echo” opens with a simple staccato melody before finding its groove a minute in, and never retreats once Taylor pleads “leave your past behind” to a flurry of drum beats. By the end of the track there’s some serious 90s techno vibes going on, and you’ll forget its modest beginnings. “Spell” similarly adds facets as it progresses, and the end result sounds like three different songs in one. It starts with a simple house beat, but this quickly gets lost amid piled-on layers of synthesizer, hi-hat, and vocoded singing. On that note, A Bath Full of Ecstasy’s title track is laden with vocal effects, and its extensive use of auto-tune is new ground for the band. You might not be a fan of the helium-inspired way Taylor’s voice morphs as he sings “if you’re looking for the cure,” but it’s hard to argue that this R&B-esque track doesn’t stand out in Hot Chip’s discography.
While A Bath Full of Ecstasy might not be the club-friendly dance album you anticipated after hearing “Hungry Child,” Hot Chip have never really been about that kind of instant gratification, and Taylor describes most current pop music as “bland.” True to his word, even the most pumping songs on this album take at least a minute to get going, which would entail a fair amount of awkwardly standing around if a DJ to played them end to end. Instead, Hot Chip is in their prime when crafting sonic collages that take some time to come to reach their peak, in a manner not unlike LCD Soundsystem (which isn’t surprising considering they share multi-instrumentalist member Al Doyle). Still, it’s hard to compare A Bath Full of Ecstasy to any other band when it carries so many hallmarks of Hot Chip themselves. Its milder moments might not inspire introspection beyond recollections of their earlier albums, but its highs are some of the highest the band has ever reached.
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