Hot Chip - A Long Way From Kansas [2LP]

A Long Way From Kansas is Hot Chip's ninth album, spread across two LPs in a gatefold sleeve with a download card, and its title tips a hat to Dorothy and Toto's long road home.

It has been almost five years since the London group's last studio album, and in the meantime they looked back with a career-spanning collection. This record looks firmly forward, and it is odder and noisier than you might expect from a band two decades into making people dance and cry at the same time.

Lead single Random Violence is a new wave power ballad with orchestral swells, written as a tribute to Keith McIvor, the Glasgow DJ known as JD Twitch of Optimo. Joe Goddard opens it before Alexis Taylor joins on the chorus, and the mix of grief and gratitude in it hits hard.

The guest list is intriguing too. Beth Ditto turns up on Me In Your Head, and Eddie Chacon lends his smooth soul voice to The Garden, while the eleven tracks close out on Crushing.

Few bands have balanced the club and the heart as well as Hot Chip, and this double LP finds them doing both with fresh purpose, plenty of nerve and a few surprises.