Song 10: Hot Chip – Slush

Among the dazzling electronic music of Hot Chip’s latest album, Slush is an unexpected island of traditionalism. There are more energetic songs on One Life Stand, catchier ones, and more instant pleasers too. But there are none – and few others elsewhere in 2010 – as interesting, poignant and expressive, and that’s why it makes this list. It’s a song of small beauties – the faltering arpeggios, sung instead of played, that underpin the first half of the song feel like they are being murmured into a microphone so as not to wake a loved one; the shimmering strings in the choruses shiver with a nervousness that complements the vocal delivery.

It all combines to create a song invitingly warm and intimate, but also elegant and neat – so neat, in fact, that when it pauses and eventually dissolves into the gorgeously loose steel-drum coda, the swell and release feels like the most natural letting-go one could imagine. From there on it’s a tribute to Slush’s composition that an electronic band playing steel drums and trumpets while singing a ballad about God and romance can seem so organic – and a sign of a satisfyingly odd song that the band can pull it off with such confidence.

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