The Warning

iTunes Review

Hot Chip deals in an aspect of electropop that too often goes uncelebrated: its feathery lyricism. The Warning, the London outfit’s second long-player, is a work of mischief that also makes plenty of room for straightfaced emotion. The title track’s glitchy shuffle folds in a nearly cooed request for directions to “the mechanical music museum” before interrupting itself with twee gangsta-isms (“Hot Chip will put you under the ground”), while “Look After Me” puts an Isleys-style guitar line in service of a lilting ballad. “Over and Over” is where the twain meet, spelling out the bare necessities: “K-I-S-S-I-N-G. S-E-X-I-N-G. C-A-S-I-O.” The album ends with something like an epic, “No Fit State,” followed by the brief “Won’t Wash,” which locates the museum’s foundation in the last minute of Syd Barrett’s “Bike.”