Hot Chip Suck Spontaneity Out Of Dance Party

Hot Chip describe their biggest club hit, "Over And Over," as a song about the joy of repetition. But that theme could have applied to any of the hooky dance-pop numbers during their Monday night set. It's a good kind of repetition, though — the kind you can hear in the dot-matrix disco beat of every Hot Chip song. And it was hypnotic enough to make notoriously dance-shy Torontonians go wild at the Mod Club.

Local boys Born Ruffians were first on stage. New York duo Shy Child, who were set to support, cancelled, so it was up to three young fellas from Parkdale to rouse the crowd with a half-hour set. Frontman Luke Lalonde has perfected the indie rock caterwaul. If Spencer Krug, Frank Black and Isaac Brock should ever need a fourth for an oddball barbershop quartet, they have their man. Their beats were bubbling and inventive, and they displayed surprising shifts in tempo and time signatures. That's what set their performance apart. But it's also, unfortunately, what killed the fun. Just when the growing crowd was starting to shake, the tempo would shift. When did indie pop turn into math rock?

When Hot Chip took their places behind a line of five keyboard stands, there was no choice but to dance. "Give up all you suckers we're the tightest muthafuckers," lead singer Alexis Taylor sang on opener "Keep Fallin'."

It's not the first lyric you'd want to hear cooed in a smooth falsetto, but that's Hot Chip's style. As that Coming On Strong favourite morphed into another, the floor became a rave revival. A little further back, members of Canada's hipster elite (Cadence Weapon, Pyramid Culture) rocked with the crowd. "Thanks for the workout," said Taylor, pointing to a mohawked dancer who broke out *NSYNC-style dance moves from the first beats of the night.

The band swept through tracks from their latest record, The Warning ("And I Was A Boy From School," "Colours" and "No Fit State"). At one point, Joe Goddard threw off his '90s-throwback sweatshirt to reveal a custom T-shirt that read, "extended version." It could have been the subtitle for the evening, as every song transformed into a crowd-pleasing dance mix.

The floor was all sweat and busted moves, but on stage, Hot Chip remained focused. To be fair, Taylor broke out a few high jumps from behind his keyboard, showing the crowd how to best rock a pair of parachute pants. With serious dance hits to perform, however, there wasn't much time left for tomfoolery, let alone spontaneity. The performance strictly adhered to the set list. Worse, the set list barely varied from previous tour stops.

One by-the-book decision you'd dare not whine about: the encore closed with the tremendous (and aforementioned) "Over And Over." Taylor doubled up on every verse, trilling Stevie Wonder-style on every "lay back." And just as Al Doyle's fuzzy guitar riff taunted the audience, signalling the beginning of the end, the music paused, rewound and shot out again. It was almost enough to warrant this a show worthy of repeat viewing.