The Warning

1	Careful 3:28
2	And I Was a Boy from School 5:19
3	Colours 5:28
4	Over and Over 5:47
5	(Just Like We) Breakdown 4:12
6	Tchaparian 3:20
7	Look After Me 4:49
8	The Warning 4:51
9	Arrest Yourself 2:31
10	So Glad to See You 4:05
11	No Fit State 5:38
12	[Untitled Track] 2:35

Barnes & Noble

Looking more like your company's IT department than a pop band, Hot Chip began their musical career playing lo-fi approximations of Prince-styled funk with jokey lyrics; appropriately, their undercooked debut, Coming On Strong, elicited more giggles than anything else. That's not likely to happen with The Warning, the band's seriously good second album. It's not as if frontmen Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard -- whose distinctive vocal interplay remains in effect -- have changed their modus operandi; they just now have the ways and means to fully realize their ideas. The good qualities found on the first album (strong melodic sense, clever instrumentation) are now at the forefront, polished, expanded, and given a fat bottom end, and the result is a party album that would fit nicely between Gnarls Barkley and LCD Soundsystem. Singles "Boy from School" and "Over and Over" work equally well as irresistible pop songs and dance-floor fodder, and moody tracks like "Just Like We (Breakdown)" and "No Fit State" recall New Order at their mid-'80s peak. But to call Hot Chip mere revivalists would be unfair. In addition to all the vintage keyboards and drum machines, they augment their sound with real drums and guitars, African thumb pianos, xylophone, harpsichord, and even a string section on the affecting slow-jam "Look After Me." This is modern music, and you have been warned: Hot Chip are a force to be reckoned with. Bill Pearis

All Music Guide

Keeping their hot streak of spotting quality artists when they hear them, the good folks at DFA welcomed to their already diverse and talented roster Hot Chip. The "Over and Over" teaser single featured the band in rocking fashion, complete with DFA signature production and a chorus courtesy of Alexis Taylor that sounds hauntingly similar to something Paul McCartney would write had he been paying attention to the music of the youth in his own backyard. A definite departure and a step in the right direction over 2005's inconsistent full-length Coming on Strong, Hot Chip's creative maturity is immediately evident in the energetic opening. "Careful," which is laced with punchy, crisp hi hats and snare drums, then gives way to the dramatic "And I Was a Boy from School." They've gone beyond the quirky electro-pop into something much more focused and pop friendly (especially with the band's tight vocal harmonies). The title track has production that wouldn't be out of place on I Am Robot and Proud's last few records, or Postal Service outtakes. But like these artists, Hot Chip focuses more on song arrangements and structure rather than technology and programming showmanship. It sums up the core of what made The Warning so accessible and enjoyable right from the onset: it's like listening to early New Order records for the first time, waiting for the next one with a little bit of excited anticipation to see what's going to happen next with every new song. Rob Theakston

Rolling Stone

A shape-shifting electronic record with an overstuffed brain and a warm heart, as if Belle and Sebastian had hooked up with Aphex Twin. Christian Hoard

Boston Globe

They've created their most hypnotic soundscape yet -- a shimmering wall of glitchy pop, twitchy soul, and miles and miles of blissed-out backbeat. Matthew Shaer