Hot Chip at First Avenue, Minneapolis (23 May 2023)

British electronic pop legends Hot Chip headlined First Avenue, in Minneapolis, on May May 23rd, in support of their sixth album Freakout/Release. This is the band’s first appearance in the area since September 2019.



As previously mentioned, we are really excited to have Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon (aka Rollie Pemberton) as support act. At first, it sounds like a weird pairing: a political rap artist and an electronic dance band together on the same bill? It just didn’t make sense… but as Rollie Pemberton started his powerful message of “black is back, back in black” in his set intro song, “Africville’s Revenge,” the Hot Chip audience started to listen up! I know for certain there were a few people around me that was interested and discovering Cadence Weapon for the first time… and they love what they heard.



Of course, we’ve been big fans since Mar 2008 when we wrote, “The lyrics are drowned in pop culture, and I would have to admit, I did smile when I heard Megaman mentioned. What impressed me is the range of music that Cadence Weapon listens to when he mentioned about Eazy-E to the Dandy Warhols to The Baha Men (“Who Let the Dogs Out”) to Iggy Pop (“I Wanna Be Your Dog”).”



Cadence Weapon is joined on stage with his DJ Jayem Kayem. She would lay down the beats as Rollie play around with his lyrics. I think my favorite song on his set was for “Skyline”, in which he disses the mayor of Toronto, “Mayor Tory doesn’t ride the bus or ride a bike or ride for us / So how can he understand what we want?”



For the song “My Crew (Woooo)”, Rollie said that the producer of the film said they used that song in their film A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. He was excited and took his mother to see this film. As the film started going on and on and it didn’t seem like they would use his music at all, he was a little worried. Of course, at the last few minutes of the film, they played his song! Rollie said, “I would not encourage movie piracy… but I filmed the s**** out of that scene!”



We’re so glad to finally see Cadence Weapon for the first time (we originally tried to see him in 2012, but it didn’t work out because it was Fourth of July week and he was supporting act for Japandroids).



We’ve been fans of Hot Chip since 2006, as mentioned in the review of One Life Stand : “I have had HC on my radar since their sophomore album, The Warning, which was probably released in 2006. That was pretty much the year that they were getting all the recognition, even getting nods from the Mercury Prize (hint: they didn’t win) and the Grammy (hint: they won)…. so it’s with much deserved that I’m reviewing their latest album, One Life Stand, out Tuesday, February 9th, on one of my favorite label, Astralwerks. So first off, since I had previous albums to compare them to, and maybe I’m wrong, but they seem a lot more polished than The Warning. That album sounds to me like they were trying to be Röyksopp and LCD Soundsystem, while it sounds to me that their latest effort, One Life Stand, sounds more “pop”. As if they’re taking their cues from Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service.”

Hot Chip (30 May 2015)

By the time we saw Hot Chip live in May 2015 they were already massive, “They continue to amaze me with their music. Their sixth album Why Make Sense? (which came out May 18th via Domino Recording) is probably their best album to date. We got to hear it live on their hour plus set, included “Huarache Lights”, “Easy To Get”, “Started Right”, “Cry For You”, “Need You Now”, and “Why Make Sense?””

For the recent First Avenue show, Hot Chip did a few old favorites like “Night & Day”, that went over well with fans. You can always tell which songs are the old ones, because, where I was at, there were all these fans dancing around me.



Remember when I was confused why they asked Cadence Weapon to join them on this tour? I quickly found out that they actually collaborated with him for the song “The Evil That Men Do”, which appeared on their new album Freakout/Release. When that song was played, near the end of their set, Cadence Weapon appeared on stage to do his thing. That song alone should get you interested in checking out Freakout/Release.