Live Review: Hot Chip

25 January 2016 | 3:09 pm | Bryget Chrisfield

"Of course we enjoy a good old-fashioned bogan singalong to Hot Chip's cover of Springsteen's Born To Run..."

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There really is nothing better than attending back-to-back gigs when you adore a band and tonight's sideshow set is bound to be an extended version of Hot Chip's unforgettable Sugar Mountain shindig.

The place is rammed and we jostle for dancing space. When this scribe accidentally dances an elbow into some dude's fat, sweaty gut? Ugh! It's a slow build to One Life Stand and then we're off and peaking. Singing along with the lyrics, we realise we're getting it all wrong: "If I could be beside you baby/It would make the world alright." But up until this point we thought Alexis Taylor was being a bit naughty and mistakenly substituted inside for "beside" - oops. Taylor wears some kinda hooded, brown jedi outfit and obviously uses the mystical energies of the Force up there. His singing is so pitch perfect it's hard to accept it's coming from a flesh-and-blood source and not some kind of machine. "Work that right side left side/Work that more" - as if we need further encouragement during Flutes. Those wind chimes can only mean one thing and that's Over And Over, which coaxes some serious moves from those waiting in the bar queues. Taylor spits out letters in time with synth stabs and working out what these spell couldn't be further from our minds - it's limbs akimbo! Need You Now is celestial and it's all hands in the air as soon as the sample hits. When Taylor's vocals overlap with Joe Goddard's, it's almost too much for us to process and so beautiful we could squeeze out real tears of happiness. And we were born Ready For The Floor. Multi-instrumentalist Rob Smoughton sports a moustache that connects with his sideburns, which is a hairy form of self-expression. Sarah Jones absolutely smashes it on drums and would rightfully win the drummer Olympics.

The encore starts gradually with as close to a ballad as Hot Chip get. And then we score a treat with Boy From School, with its scattered bleeps that fit together like a complex sonic jigsaw. Of course we enjoy a good old-fashioned bogan singalong to Hot Chip's cover of Springsteen's Born To Run, which mashes into LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for the closing segment. Here Al Doyle ably takes on James Murphy's lead vocals. The only way tonight could be any better is if tomorrow were a public holiday.