Peculiar medium-bodied Baltic porter loses initial black chocolate-kissed coffee roast to oily hop-charred walnut sharpness and trifling dried fruit sourness. Closer to a precarious schwarzbier with its musky caramel-malted creaminess, dry cocoa-powdered piquancy, and tannic black cherry tartness. Ashy cardboard backdrop fades abruptly to buttery soy cocoa finish. Perplexingly meandering.
Truly ‘uncommon’ Belgian-styled dubbel delicately combines spicy herbal fruits for amber-hazed curry-like extravaganza. One of the finest canned libations from the Left Coast, this unfiltered medium body piles plentiful peppery hops atop dry Kaffir lime zest, sour lemongrass tartness, and candi-sugared apple-watermelon sweetness. Coriander and Thai spice flitter through vanilla-butterscotch midst before alcohol-whirred fungi-like Belgian yeast strain commandeers muted orange-bruised anise-backed finish. Pour slowly to avoid risk of over-carbonation.
Lactic mocha malt mildness and guarded coffee-espresso bittering unexpectedly contrasted by fruit-dried port intensity of curious Russian Imperial Stout. At midst, brown-sugared chocolate-milked cocoa powdering usurps wood-smoked hop-oiled oats-charred grain roasting, vinous cherry-pureed prune sourness, and molasses-sapped Madagascar bourbon vanilla tease.
On tap, well-rounded copper-hazed ‘hop-header’ brings resinous piney hop bittering to caramel-malted apple-jacked peach-tangerine-pineapple tang. Creamy vanilla-maple surge counters oncoming grapefruit-peeled juniper bite to damp earthen-grained bottom, becoming more pungently bitter at floral-daubed fruit-sharpened alcohol-burnt finish. Canned version yields juicier tropical fruiting, stickier candy apple sweetness, and sappier spruce-tipped pine bitterness. Possibly the best canned ale on the East Coast.
Complex russet-clouded tan-headed oak-aged ‘wild ale’ saddles soured brettanomyces yeast clumps with endless wood-dried raspberry puree tartness. Sharp prickly hop bite reinforces lambic-like raspberry vinaigrette acidity, heightening vinous yellow grape-skin esters, vinegary cider sharpness, and fizzy sparkling champagne lilt. Sour-candied cherry pucker picks up tertiary rosé, burgundy, and bourbon illusions as well as eye-squinting lemon liming. Solvent vinegar-like astringency and mossy barnyard musk deepen funky sour ale disposition.
Only the most disciplined artists of the last decade have been able to efficiently manipulate computer technology and effectively incorporate its creative innovations into ideal contemporary pop. Meeting in the year 2000, London-based multi-instrumentalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard have steadily improved technical proficiency while heightening the tuneful dramatic intrigue of their augmented post-disco troupe, Hot Chip.
Joined by likeminded synth-based guitarist, Owen Clark, whose provocative artwork (in collaboration with groundbreaking graphic designer, Darren Wall) decorate Hot Chip’s first four modern dance-floor escapades, plus LCD Soundsystem synth-guitar programmer, Al Doyle, and drum machinist, Felix Martin, Hot Chip’s impressionable ’04 long-play debut, Coming On Strong, proved worthy. More importantly, it opened the door for eloquent glam-disco chestnut, The Warning, which became a massively popular ’06 breakthrough and harbinger of the shape of things to come.
In retrospect, The Warning seems rather conventional and minimalist in approach. Simplex crosscut rhythms pulsate through the bustling electronica tonicity of scintillating scrambler, “Careful.” And a luminescent gleam and glitzy sheen polish up every danceable track, especially joyous celebration, “Over And Over.”
But this set the stage for ‘08s striking Made In The Dark, a meticulously accessible retro-futurist club-ready offering perfect for nighttime hip-shakin’ or hedonist headphone hoarding. Squiggly noises and squirt gun synthesizer blasts envelop kinetic ‘80s new wave mantra, “Shake A Fist.” Hook-filled smash, “Ready For The Floor,” reinforces its quipped titular refrain with nifty house beats. Burundi tribal rhythms cling to the two-note electro-disco keyboard stomp of “Bendable Poseable.” And tinselly cymbal-slashed jitterbug, “Hold On,” reaches climactically symphonic summits.
Learning to better integrate keyboards, strings, and a violin played like an upright cello into the mix, Taylor claims his “obvious next step” was to get “more disco influenced and mid-tempo.” And for the first time ever, he had a piano at his disposal. As a result, Hot Chip delivered their best devotional elegies on ‘10s domesticated romancer, One Life Stand, advancing underscored solemnity and overall sublimity to fresh new levels.
Opener “Thieves In The Night” siphons Visage’s “Fade To Grey” keyboard drone (previously espoused by The Warning’s glazed trip-hop send-up, “No Fit State”) for a retro-styled synth-pop shudder reminiscent of Yaz and ringing with enough quivering heartbroken tenderness as Alison Moyet’s best post-Yaz works. Yearlong live staple, “Alley Cats,” gets a somber Belle & Sebastian treatment just a bit less adventurously arousing than the thieving overture.
Angelic sweet-voiced euphoria guides the Euro-styled house beats of string-laden auto-tuned highlight, “I Feel Better,” which Clark claims “willed itself into being” and further asserts was “the hardest to helm and shape into existence.” Strangely, delicate keyboard-arpeggiated cradlesong, “Slush,” uses Ralph Kramden’s funny Honeymooners’ catch-phrase ‘hum-a-nah hum-a-nah’ grumble as a nifty lullaby device. Industrial-clad New Order-like bass-boomed closer, “Take It In,” loads on surreal multi-harmony sentimentality at the Thompson Twins-tagged chorus. Furthermore, Trinidadian steel pan percussionist Fimber Bravo adds a cool Caribbean vibe to One Life Stand’s majestic funk-grooved neo-soul title cut.
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The newly waxed One Life Stand proves to be a deeply emotional affair.
OWEN: All of our songs are about common themes in music. In the past, they were all about love dressed up in heavier metaphors and had humor as their armor. Our latest songs are more bare, with the songwriting coming to the fore more.
The album title, One Life Stand, seems like a shrewd snickering spoonerism or a cunningly twisted adage.
We’re quite terrible at settling on album titles. Previous releases use one of the tracks’ names to catch the overall theme or sum up the mood. With The Warning, there’s lots of elements of caution and hazard. For Made In The Dark, the idea was we were composing an album slightly naively with things you wouldn’t normally put in the same set together. The quieter songs are composed without any structured bent. This one, the whole record had a mood about love and how accidental fate could be. That bound the album.
The title track seems to have a fascination with Giorgio Moroder’s robotik disco machinations as well as Kraftwerk’s avant-prog kraut-rock. But then it shifts into the hazy galactic love-struck romanticism of Roxy Music’s most hypnotic requiems.
Yeah. It has a powerful chorus and a nice sentiment. It really shows itself in the realm of popular music in the dance party area. That’s very much about the self – this is what I am and what I do. These are my intentions. It’s about expressing fate and love, which is rare nowadays, and that possibly stands out amongst the track’s surrounding it. The songs following keep along that idea, but expand the idea of domesticity, brotherly love, and other relationship aspects.
“Hand Me Down Your Love” and “Slush” are extremely dramatic ballads.
We’ve had songs that have been gentler or out-and-out ballads. The Warning had “Look After Me.” Made had “Whistle For Will.” The ballads may have stuck out more on Made, but perhaps on this album they sit more comfortably and rise out. “Slush” is the one that has a different sonic palette. The drums are less dance-y and more like an old Memphis soul lullaby. “Keep Quiet,” on the other hand, sounds like our older tracks – homey – based on careful, quiet, small spaces. But “Hand Me Down” has more of a propulsive Motown/ Stax drum element that makes it rattle along at a good pace. They fit better with the disco house numbers. The songwriting and production make them, perhaps, seem more apparent as ballads, but I thought they fit together quite well.
Beneath it all, there’s an expansive experimentalism that moves beyond mere synth-pop.
I think that’s because we always liked bands such as Kraftwerk. We’re less interested in the electronic scene as a way of what we ought to be doing. A band like Kraftwerk is very electronic, but still very much a pop band. Their songwriting, experimentation, and forms of production are impeccable. It’s that fine line we’re interested in.
Who were some early musical influences?
Mine are classic ones. But I haven’t directly referenced these in our music ‘til this album. The Beatles and Beach Boys as well as disco and old house music.
What have you been listening to lately?
The five of us have sprawling influences. But there’s a few things that bond us like Brian Eno’s production and bands such as Talking Heads and Devo. Those apply to everybody. There’s obviously a side that involves hip-hop. But we’ve also kept abreast of modern dance too. And I enjoy Alex Chilton’s Like Flies To Sherbet.
An underlying Jazz component slips into a few tracks.
Alexis has an improvised music side project with Charles Hayward of This Heat and John Coxon from Spring Heel Jack. That’s an area where the playing might be influenced by Jazz, but I’d never call the arrangements jazzy. Joy Division is an essential part of the musical landscape but I don’t know if their sound is a direct influence – maybe just the approach. New Order’s a more apparent inspiration.
Tell me about the artwork you’ve prepared for each Hot Chip album.
I had a hand in all the illustrations. Coming On Strong had a wanky keyboard and bold colors, which was where we were at. The Warning produced the sculptures all the photos and graphics were based on – typical accidents and the use of a wedge to damage perfect things. The idea of something being broke – as a warning that nothing lasts. For Made in The Dark I wanted something that could be regarded as cellular or some sort of old ruin. So there’s this disc that could be taken many ways and also this oxidized bronze as an old musing in the dark. On the new one, I was going for antiquity and flux. The idea of a thing either being installed, repaired, removed or destroyed. It could either exist forever or only one moment.
-John Fortunato
Creamy full-bodied slow-sipping oak-aged wee heavy brings wafting peat-smoked single-malt Scotch sweetness to brown-sugared fruit-candied affluence. Chunky yeast sediment settles near bottom of turbid brown body, thickening syrupy molasses richness, chewy raisin-pureed cherry-bruised fig-honeyed fruiting and warming port-bourbon illusions. Butterscotch, oaken vanilla, and cinnamon-spiced apple upsurge round out alcohol-whirred paragon.
Brewed at the foot of Mount Fuji, excellent citric-fruited medium body retains sharp grassy-hopped fizz, dark floral bouquet, and understated nuttiness to contrast creamy caramel malting. Graham cracker spine holds up tart orange-dried cherry-pied apple-jacked souring and sweet apricot-peach-strawberry nuance. Almond, praline, and cashew fill out busy backend.
Expectant musty farmhouse funk and tart lemon-dried bittering bring Belgian-like sour ale nature to rocky beige-headed saffron-hazed medium body. Phenol raw-honeyed nectarine, pineapple, banana, and curacao orange fruiting receives resinous hop-dried barnyard-horsehide astringency. Too harshly metallic and weirdly herbal to capture crossover attention.
Cordial moderate-bodied golden-hazed German-styled wheat ale features usual suspects. Ripe banana seeps into clove-spiced grassy-hopped lemon-dried midst of fizzy soft-watered fodder. Casual banana bread finish enlivened by wheat biscuit spine. On tap, dryer Berliner wiess qualities emerge, such as saltier lemon-seeded souring and raw-honeyed wheat breading. Plus, its body is a hazier yellowed beige.
WOODBRIDGE, CONNECTICUT
One of Connecticut’s first craft breweries (1989), NEW ENGLAND BREWING COMPANY moved across the street to its much bigger Woodbridge digs in 2013. Just off the Merritt Parkway, the silver silo-bound NEBC needed the larger white aluminum facility for its multiple fermenters, increased beer production and experimental research department.
The red brick interior features an overhead-doored pub with copper-top bar, pipe railing and reclaimed wood siding serving the epoxy-floored barrel and table seating from three separate draught stations. A crowded equipment-laden gray-walled brewroom to the left supplies the rangy elixirs.
My wife and I grab seats outside at the black metal-furnished, canopy-topped front patio to down nine previously untried suds, August ’21.
Caramel-spiced dried fruiting, earthen mineral grains and leafy hop moisture appeased Large Farva, a dewy soft-toned Vienna lager.
Lemon-doused Pilot Belgian White Ale made a stylistic turnabout with its expectant coriander-spiced mandarin orange tartness overrun by Huell Melon-hopped white grape esters, hefe-like banana/clove sweetness, mild grapefruit zesting and salted herbal whims.
Lactobacillus-cultured Berliner Weisse, Strawberry Rhubarb Trash, forged ahead with its tart lemon-soured strawberry piquancy greeting sharp cranberry-licked rhubarb pucker and chalked lime parch.
Salted raspberry tartness led Trash Berry, a flattish Berliner Weisse with lightly lemon-soured cranberry and pomegranate pucker.
Dry orange desiccated lemon rot and salty white-peppered herbage melded into raw-grained barnyard acridity for Scrumtrulescent Saison, a slightly phenolic farmhouse digression.
Like a dewily dry English IPA crossed with tropical New Zealand hops, Dose plies tart guava-passionfruit-papaya souring to mild floral herbage and wispy pine tones.
Offshoot Prickly Pear Dose placed easygoing prickly pear tartness alongside peachy grapefruit tanginess as well as subtle passionfruit-melon-pineapple snips.
Another India Pale Ale, bright and fuzzy Mosaic-Citra-Azacca-hopped Stegosuarus flashed spicy orange-peeled grapefruit, pineapple and peach tanginess as well as mild passionfruit, grapefruit and melon illusions above rich pale malt sugaring.
Cold-conditioned Italian espresso roast introduced molasses oats-smoked oatmeal stout, Revelations, picking up mild nut-charred cocoa beaning.
ORIGINAL MAY 2010 ARTICLE
Not necessarily a brewpub originally, though there was always a few taps running in the reception area, NEW ENGLAND BREWING COMPANY has grown into one of the East Coast’s best microbrewers since its humble 1989 inception. On top of that, their increasingly diversified libations are canned for mass distribution. At the forefront of modern beer and ale canning, they became the first East Coast microbrew to deviate away from bottling (second in America after Colorado’s Oskar Blues).
Situated in a red brick building on a back road industrial center behind a mall five miles south of New Haven, I visited this excellent small brewery, May 2010. A nice beer can-bottle collection lines the walls around the reception and garage area and a statue of Elvis Presley oversees the aluminum brew tanks in the rear. Owner Rob Leonard, its initial brewer, bought and relocated the Norwalk-based brewery to Woodbridge in 2001. New England Brewing’s most impressive brews have become specialty strong ales such as New England Wet Willy Scotch Ale and New England Ghandi-Bot Double IPA, plus limited bottled selection includes superfine Imperial Stout Trooper (all reviewed in Beer Index).
BEST CONNECTICUT MICROBREW STORE- One of the best places to find a great selection of microbrewed craft beers is at Gordon’s Yellow Front Wine, just off Route 95 in New London. Featuring many of the finest national and international beers and all the finest local product by New England Brewing, Olde Burnside, Thomas Hooker, City Steam, and Cottrell’s, Gordon’s serves Connecticut’s beer elite better than any other state store I’ve come across since ’97.
NEWINGTON, CONNECTICUT
Five miles south of Hartford lies residential township, Newington, where CARSON’S BREWHOUSE began business in ’09, but closed down by 2011.
A former HOPS brewpub, this freestanding brown-tanned restaurant-brewery (with flat-slated base) served simple blue-collar fodder for nearby mall rats and mid-scale locals, May ‘10. Its open mid-sized interior featured a center rectangular bar with twenty seats and two small TV’s surrounded by sided dining space. Windowed kitchen served Americana steak-seafood-burger menu including recommended French onion soup with Aegean Salad (feta cheese, tomatoes, onions, oregano, and red onions).
Rear glass-encased brew tanks served mainstream fare such as popcorn-fizzed maize-dried raw-honeyed Carson’s Light, astringent citric-vegetal corn-oiled phenol-hopped Golden Lager, and best-selling mocha-fruited Carson’s Amber Red. Better were coffee-dried chocolate-seeded resin-hopped peanut-shelled walnut-embittered Brewhouse Porter and seasonally available honey-buttered lemon-dropped wheat-paled Honey Bock.