Is The Youth Just Getting Old

Hot Chip @ Webster Hall 8/5/2015
Huarache Lights / One Life Stand / Night & Day / Easy to Get -> Forever In My Life / Started Right / Flutes / Over and Over / Alley Cats / Cry for You / Need You Now / Ready For the Floor / I Feel Better // White Wine and Fried Chicken / And I Was A Boy From School / Dancing in the Dark -> All My Friends

Hot Chip “Huarache Lights”

When I learned that Hot Chip were playing a few shows in New York, I made a point of getting a ticket to the show that was on my birthday because it just made a lot of sense to see them play “Huarache Lights” on a day when I’d be inevitably forced to think a lot about my age. There’s a lot of things going in “Huarache Lights” both musically and thematically, but the aspect of it that really gets under my skin is the way Alexis Taylor sings about aging. It’s not about aging in an “oh my god, I’m soooooo old” way, but about the shifting of cultural context around you, and wondering where you and the things you love fit into things as a new wave of youth culture comes up behind you. He’s singing about this in relationship to being a DJ, and thinking about technology and the inevitability of obsolescence, and it somehow neutralizes its core anxiety with a cool, rational acceptance of change, and conviction that living in the moment is the only way to go.

So yes, dancing to this song was cathartic. Dancing to pretty much all of the set was cathartic! I really loved this show, and being in an audience full of people who were dancing and singing along with little self-consciousness made me feel more comfortable in my skin than I’ve felt in a long while. It was a very good decision to have this particular experience on that particular day.

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