The received wisdom on London's Hot Chip is that they're equal opportunity funsters who'll pinch from any old genre in the name of a grin. But after the potent（強而有力的） combination（結合） of "Over and Over", "Boy From School", and all the attendant（隨後） remixes increased their festival bill font size by about 20 points, there was good reason to believe that the London quintet's next record might find them rectifying（修正） their cartoonish pop into something sleeker and more streamlined. They might have, for instance, decided to expand on the soul and R&B influences that occasionally pepper their music; or to smoothen the undanceable rumples（凌亂；不平順） of their creaky, short-circuited pop with a few well-placed blasts of minimal techno; or maybe, to topple（推翻；顛覆） their previous output with an even more dazzling pastiche of color, candy, and complexity.
Any one of those paths would have served Hot Chip well. But of all of their many virtues, focus isn't one, and instead they took them all. A string of self-conscious interruptions（阻礙）, perfect pop moments, show-offy sonics, and inscrutable（不可理解；不可思議；不可測） non-sequiturs, the lovable but flawed（有缺點的） Made in the Dark has moments that come off as almost gluttonous-- and that's even by Hot Chip's standards. And while the majority（多數） of the material here ranges somewhere between inoffensive（無害；無礙） and fantastic, momentarily（短暫；臨時） obnoxious（令人不悅） misfires (the funhouse mirror horrorshow "Bendable Poseable", the impish（頑皮的） "Don't Dance", and the weirdly overrated "Shake a Fist") underscore why "all of the above" is not a tenable（經得起評判的） long-term formula for the band: That level of consumption（耗盡） can't stay charming forever.
Which is to say that Hot Chip have a big record in them and this isn't it. Once you do away with that disappointment, though, there's plenty（很多；充足） to appreciate. There might not be anything as definitive or as moment-making as "Over and Over" or "Boy From School" here, but once you've acclimatized（適應） to Made in the Dark's sonic trills（顫音） and party poppers, some affecting songs emerge（浮現；出現）. On the pop side, none are as lovable as the tender-hearted electro of "Ready for the Floor", in which the band once again finds comfortable middle ground between Alexis Taylor's balladesque vocal and vibrant（振動；顫動）, electro-pop dressing. Elsewhere, the feelgood "Touch Too Much" cruises（遊於） by on a big chorus（合唱） and some characteristically clattering percussions（敲；打）, while the infectious（感染性的） "One Pure Thought" opens against a backdrop of gnarled guitar chords and keening synths.
Unhampered（未受阻） by the otherwise relentless（殘酷；無情） hairpinning subjected to all their uptempo material, Hot Chip's ballads do better service to the band's songwriting skills. With a serpentine（彎曲行進） vocal melody, a healthy backbeat, and a gently unfolding（展開；展示） array of whistles, pinging guitar notes, and reverbed backing vocals, album centrepiece "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" is an easy highlight. Meanwhile, with its slow changes and melting analog pads, the two-minute dirge "Whistle for Will" provides Low-style gravitas(莊重；莊嚴), closer "In the Privacy of Our Love" flirts with gospel（福音）, and the album's title track is an exercise in lazy, Sunday morning soul.
On paper, those individual components read like they might make for a patchy（拼湊）, turbulent（騷亂） record, and to be honest, that's pretty much how Made in the Dark plays. For all the talk about them being genre agnostics, they're just as beholden to everyday rules of pace and structure（結構） as anyone else. So: Good record but not a great one. By the time you see them this summer, they'll have it sorted out.
-Mark Pytlik, February 05, 2008
以我的英文程度，就算搭配眼睛博士，還是看得一知半解。可是，誰在乎呢？看得懂最後一段倒數第二句吧「good record but not a great one」，用聽的不就好了，管他廢話一堆。點進pitchfork這篇樂評的頁面下方有試聽連結還有MV的連結，目前是還可以下載，等到夏天我就不知道了（笑）。
另外review中提到上一張專輯裡的那首over nd over我已經聽到很膩了，如果有空的話我可以補上試聽，而它頁面給的專輯試聽歌曲是首低迷的歌，建議看MV比較夠來電。而我對不懂單字所做的註解沒有特別寫出它的詞性，主要是提醒一下自己那個單字什麼意思而已。
還蠻多字高中學過的感覺，六學期都不及格果然不是不及格假的..
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