The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: Hot Chip

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

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Who: Hot Chip

What: A Bath Full of Ecstasy

When: June 2019

Where: Domino Recording Co.

Why: For all the nuance and tweaks they've made over the years, it's still hard not to know when you're listening to a Hot Chip song. There's comfort in that, a familiarity in the beats. A Bath Full of Ecstasy is another solid performance from "the thinking person's party band," with a kaleidoscope of glitchy rhythms and sophisticated retro-future grooves. "Leave your past behind/just an echo/nothing to regret no," Alexis Taylor sings in his filmy, cherubic tones on "Echo," and it's easy to do just that listening to this collection of diaphanous dance gems.   

[posted 3.24.20]