One Life Stand

{{Infobox album
(2008)
(2010)
(2012)

**One Life Stand** Is the fourth album released by Hot Chip in 2010. One Life Stand (song) was released on the 30th November 2009 and the album was releases on the 28th January 2010.

## Track Listings

* Thieves in the Night
* Hand Me Down Your Love
* I Feel Better
* One Life Stand (song)
* Brothers
* Slush
* Alley Cats
* We Have Love
* Keep Quiet
* Take It In

### Extended Ep

* Bubbles
* Build A House

## Trivia

* Alley Cats was the first song written for the album.

## Production

One Life Stand was not recorded in the manner that previous albums were. Taylor stated that the album was not "made in short bursts" but was "made with time". The first song created was "Alley Cats", which was written near the end of the band's 2008 tour, the only song to be written and performed whilst on tour. From performing it live, the band formulated a structure for the song that they felt would work and added a number of new features, such as new melodics, new hooks and a new bass line.

The band partly returned to the creative process used in the creation of The Warning in that some parts of songs were written and recorded in Goddard's bedroom, with Taylor also writing from his house and recording in the room he designated as a "music room". These parts were then built upon in a studio where the band had more space, enabling them to "expand on things". Goddard used Cubase to record at his house whilst Logic Pro was used in the studio as well as GarageBand to create parts of songs. Of the latter Taylor said, "that's what I use for recording, and that's like half of the record is going through that program".[3] In regards to the creation of the music, Taylor stated that everyone had involvement in aspects of all of the tracks. Taylor stated that the group felt as though they had exhausted their home studio sound and the possibilities of the instruments they could use at home. Despite this, Taylor explained that he and Joe have a similar work aesthetic and that ideas would "come any time of the day or night"; working on material at home would enable them to "record at home whenever ideas come". However Taylor stated, "even the studio we worked in, it's not like a professional studio that is like, top of the range. It's just a big basement with a desk and various synthesizers and a drum kit."

Goddard said that although the album came together easily, the band had difficulty creating "Hand Me Down Your Love" because "it was just a matter of months and months of adding synthesizers, and adding drum parts", which resulted in "something like 160 tracks or pieces of music". As well as this, the band needed to edit out sections that they felt were unnecessary. Goddard discussed the element of time and stated that because the band had more time to create the album, they "tried things out differently" which was ultimately "a little bit unhelpful" due to the number of recorded parts that were never used. Goddard said the band wanted to move away from synths and minimised their presence by making them more subtle. Although the band wanted the album to be a pop record and present "a unified front", Al Doyle stated that the band did not want to lose the "experimental element that [they] had before". To achieve this the band used a broader range of instruments, including a flugelhorn and steelpans in combination with synths and drum machines, as well as a guitar, a drum kit and a piano. Doyle said it was "quite exciting for [the band] to work with that palette of instruments". Whilst the band wanted to create an album that was more cohesive, Taylor said that they did not "try to make it all sound like the songs are from the same record".

## Writing

Unlike Made in the Dark, the song writing approach to One Life Stand was less of a collaborative effort. Only three or four songs were written as a group whilst the rest were written by Goddard and Taylor, though Doyle said "we did have input in the way it was produced". Doyle described the writing process for the album as "a bit like writing a poem" because there was "a certain structure" that the band needed to work to whilst exercising "as much freedom" as they could. Goddard described the band's approach to song-writing as a "mix of things with a lot of very careful thinking about rhythms, and interlaying a lot of different ideas and influences" though, at certain points, there would be the sense that something needed to occur and these elements in songs were created spontaneously from the interaction between himself and Taylor: "this melody will somehow suddenly explode in your mind. It's never planned, it just seems to happen; almost like it has to." "Hand Me Down Your Love" and "Slush" were written by Taylor whilst Goddard wrote "Brothers". Doyle stated that "One Life Stand" and "I Feel Better" were put together "in a slightly more piecemeal way".

The album was penned in the summer, with Doyle stating that the band were trying to make an "upbeat, optimistic, summertime record". Goddard said that in previous work, the band were "nervous about being open or emotionally honest" and would sometimes "have a jokiness or guarded sense to some of the words" whereas the new album is more open lyrically. In response to a description of the album as the band's most serious yet, Taylor said, "there was no decision to be more or less comic. I don't feel more or less humorous in my day-to-day" but stated that he could hear melancholy, of which he said was in "almost everything" he writes. He explained that he did not know why this was the case and said, "I can't ever write a song that just sounds completely saccharin. Even if I'm singing about someone being my complete love life, I'm singing about my own inabilities to be as bright as that person." Like Taylor, Doyle said he felt that there was "a certain vein of disquiet and melancholy that runs through the record". Another emotion that the band felt was present in One Life Stand was love. Goddard stated that the band did not set out to write an album about love but due to them feeling "quite settled and happy", he admitted that it had come through in their song writing. In particular, Taylor wrote some of the songs whilst holding his newborn daughter. Taylor felt that due to their growth as song writers and producers the band had progressed over time, resulting in improved "clarity, melodic simplicity and strength" in their song writing.

## Album Name

The name of the album was chosen because the band could not agree upon any other names. Taylor described the album title as being "a very dumb pun in a way" and felt it was "quite an ugly sounding phrase" but despite this, he felt the sentiment behind made it "quite a nice thing to say" because, as in the title song, it refers to "turning a one night stand into someone's whole life". Taylor stated that he liked "that kind of way of expressing love towards someone" and the idea of using a "simple but quite clumsy turn on the cliché" to do so.

Taylor discussed the idea of applying the album title as a metaphor for how it could be read. He felt the title suggested longevity and stated that although it was not the band's intention to create an album "that'll be around for a long time", there was a "kind of an underlying guide to make songs worthwhile for a long time, and not just temporary".

## Artwork

Darren Wall (Wallzo), who previously designed the artwork for The Warning and Made in the Dark, was responsible for the album artwork for One Life Stand. As with previous Hot Chip album designs, Wall worked closely with Owen Clarke on the initial idea to reach "a core aesthetic" to experiment with. Wall expressed that over time the taste and influences of the band and himself "are always a little bit different", which results in differing artwork. However, Wall stated that he and Clarke have "hugely overlapping tastes" and tend to "gravitate towards 'mysterious objects' that invite interpretation" such as the blocks featured on the cover of The Warning and "The Artifact" used for Made in the Dark. The design the duo settled on was of a suspended marble head, which was inspired by photographs of statues being lowered into place using coloured canvas slings. Wall felt this created an interesting theme due to the idea of a classical form being "intersected with bright stripes of colour" and the idea appealed to the band. Wall described the image and being "essentially quite an over-the-top image" and stated that there was "plenty of Giorgio de Chirico and Hipgnosis reference" in the image.