My Top Favourite 350 songs of all time. #340

Hot Chip – Playboy

A lot of people don’t like Hot Chip. Fair enough. I’m sure that it’s got something to do with them all going to that school that all pop stars seem to have gone to the last few years. Maybe it’s something to do with the singer being called Alexis. Alexis, for fuck’s sake.

Then there’s the fact they look like a Christian Union Depeche Mode covers band. A bit of classism coming in, I reckon. Fact is, the working class don’t produce bands any more. The equipment’s too expensive, it’s all kids called Giles and Harvey buying drum machines on their parents credit cards and spending their gap year in India sampling Sufi choirs or something.

I could have gone with their Blue Monday moment, Over and Over or the electro Housemartins (and I can’t be the only punter who’d be tempted by that on the menu) stylings of Slush but it’s Playboy that moves and grooves me.

Playboy. Which to me still sounds like Ghost Town by the Specials remixed by Arab Strap. There’s the asthmatic fairground melancholy of the former with the metronomic menace of the latter. There’s a dash of knowing wit about their middle class beats – “Blazin’ out Yo La Tengo hey yay, drivin round Putney with the top down hey yay...” which makes the whole thing worth a million of anything that Vampire Wankers* will ever come up with.


*Yep, it's the first thing I could think of calling them. Apart from the Preppy Wanker Showtime Band.