Hot Chip’s sophomore DFA set, “The Warning,” is only just taking off worldwide, but the U.K. rock outfit say it can’t wait to get started on album number three. “This album’s been worked for a long time in our minds even if it seems brand new to a lot of people after the Mercury Prize nomination,” singer and songwriter Alexis Taylor tells Billboard.com. “We’ll start the new record in January.”
In fact, Taylor and songwriting partner Joe Goddard have already recorded nine songs but have made the decision to start again from scratch, in an attempt to capture their newly expanded live sound.
“Everything we’ve recorded in the past has been made by just me and Joe in his home without studio costs, so we were afforded quite a lot of freedom,” he says. “This time, we’ll be in a proper studio and make it the way we play live, with all five of us, so it’s going to be very different.”
A new single, “Double Shaw”, will be issued in the U.K. before the end of 2006 and the band is already playing several as-yet-unreleased songs live. Taylor promises a diverse range of sounds, from the straight house of “Hold On” to the “heavy metal meets the Ronettes” of “Out at the Pictures”.
“We’ve got one song that starts as an Afrobeat rhythm but then drops into a half-speed ballad. We’re calling it ‘Graceland’ at the moment because Joe wanted the drums to sound like the Paul Simon song,” Taylor reveals.
Hot Chip begins a North American tour tomorrow (Nov. 1) in Baltimore, but Taylor warns that their dancefloor anthem “Over and Over”, which was recently re-issued as a single in the U.K., peaking at No. 27, might not be in the set much longer.
“On our U.K. tour, it seemed like people in the front row were waiting for that one song,” he says. “In the past, I’ve dropped songs from our set that I’ve felt were getting too much attention and I’d quite happily ease off playing ‘Over and Over’ and play some other music. Mind you, there are four other people in the band who would probably fight against me on that.”
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