These nine new songs see the band’s gift for melody and grasp of pop’s dynamics tweaked into transcendent shapes by house master Philippe Zdar and xx producer Rodaidh McDonald.
For all its glimmering synths and the robotic pathos of Taylor’s idiosyncratic vocals, this is a record with both heart and soul.
Their ingenuity and introspection often serves as an antidote to brash, factory-made pop, making them crucial figures within the wider pop landscape. On A Bath Full of Ecstasy, Hot Chip remain as vital as ever.
A lush, adventurous experience, immersive and refreshing.
Hot Chip have always made songs that slip between the erotic and and neurotic, but this time out there’s another level, as the tracks slip sideways to comment on our upside down world.
A Bath Full of Ecstasy provides hope within strife, encourages repeated listens as much for their danceability as the quality of the writing.
Hot Chip's new album is a giddy, nerdy and camp appreciation of all sides of dance music.
The few weaknesses of A Bathfull of Ecstasy – particularly the decision by the band to frontload all the strongest tracks – prove to be minor hitches in what is otherwise a characteristically superb song collection.
Their strongest offering in years, where dance is an act of defiance.
They have been put on this planet to create beautiful, awe-inspiring packages of synth pop and alternative dance, a charge that A Bath Full of Ecstasy more than delivers on.
Their more collaborative process has brought an album that, while rarely deviating from that Hot Chip sound, feels lighter and freer.
The band’s seventh album is compulsively listenable, oddly moving, and stranger than it first appears.
A Bath Full of Ecstasy is exuberant and lush, replete with grand, sweeping electro-pop compositions.
Another gem from one of synth pop’s most solid acts.
It’s near impossible to see them as stuck in neutral when their lyrics reflect such earnest hopefulness.
Immersive, joyous, but sometimes insubstantial, A Bath Full of Ecstasy lives up to its name in more ways than one.
Peel back some of the glowing layers of glossy coating, though, and you’ll find a beating heart; one that is ageing, resistant, religiously steady; a recipe for inertia. It’s just all a shade too familiar.
The new Hot Chip record, ‘A Bath Full of Ecstasy’ is nothing short of an absolute delight.
Never have Hot Chip sounded more like the song Kip sings at the end of Napoleon Dynamite - that alone could make this their definitive musical statement.
"A Bath Full of Ecstasy" sure as hell feels like one, alright (I don't even do drugs). If you ignore the ugly cover art, the album is beautifully-produced, colorful and heartwarming to boot. I like the direction Hot Chip took here and they stay as geeky and quirky as ever.
Fav Tracks: Hungry Child, No God, Melody of Love, Echo, Spell, Positive
Least Fav Track: Why Does My Mind
Score
8.5
Exceptional
Hot Chip's signature brand of existential dance music is yet again polished as hell on their latest record, A Bath Full of Ecstasy. The exuberant synth beats are contrasted by Alexis Taylor's croons about love as expected. The lyrics on "Hungry Child" or "Melody of Love" are some you've heard before on past Hot Chip records, but the full-on danceability of ABFoE more than makes up for the retreading. "Hungry Child" in particular is a banger, with a sizzling synth ... read more
No song is too straightforward or too fanciful. Really shows an impressively individualistic world of poppy grandiosity with a bohemian flair. Its textures are off the wall, instrumentation so well placed, and some intrepid, sloping vocal performances that captivate with lushness. It’s not just the production that’s illuminating, but its soulful expedience.
Love the pressing nature of “Melody of Love”, and how the vocals lay back, not as much of a force compared to the ... read more
HOT CHIP DISCOGRAPHY
First of all, sorry for lowering the track ratings for this album so intensely, but some of this songs are so "meh" that I am unable to maintain the 100s that you guys left on some tracks.
Just as a seer does, on my review for "Why Make Sense?" I added that there was a lot of potential on Hot Chip's "Dark Knight", "huarache Lights" and "Why Make Sense" thanks to their kinda lush soundscapes and less acid direction that ... read more
1 | Melody of Love 4:18 | 83 |
2 | Spell 6:18 | 84 |
3 | Bath Full of Ecstasy 4:00 | 80 |
4 | Echo 4:40 | 84 |
5 | Hungry Child 6:05 | 83 |
6 | Positive 5:37 | 75 |
7 | Why Does My Mind 4:14 | 80 |
8 | Clear Blue Skies 6:45 | 73 |
9 | No God 5:38 | 77 |
#6 | / | musicOMH |
#11 | / | Slant Magazine |
#16 | / | Mixmag |
#16 | / | PopMatters |
#16 | / | The Independent |
#17 | / | The Guardian |
#29 | / | Obscure Sound |
#31 | / | MOJO |
#33 | / | Q Magazine |
#47 | / | Louder Than War |