We're not sure how they chose the lineup for Wednesday night's Central Park Summerstage show, but we have a hunch it might have been an alphabet thing: Hot Chip, the headliners, were joined by Holy Ghost! and Hercules and Love Affair. It turns out they have something in common besides the H connection: for as good as their electropop albums are, all three all a lot more fun live. Holy Ghost! (pictured above) kicked things off, and we're happy to report that even though they've only been playing live shows for about three months (at least according to LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, earlier this year), they seem to have used this summer to settle into a comfortable onstage rhythm. We wouldn't be surprised if Holy Ghost! is headlining a Summerstage show in a couple of years -- their energy, and their hooks, are infectious. The uninitiated would do well to start with "Static on the Wire" and the Michael Jackson-tinged "I Will Come Back," both of which are available at the band's MySpace page.
Hercules and Love Affair made it quite clear what they expected from their audience: after kicking things off with "You Belong," one of the many people on stage declared, "All of you just standing there looking at us -- you better motherfucking dance!" At least they're not hypocrites-- there was so much voguing happening onstage that our date remarked, "Never have I felt so much like I'm in the movie Paris is Burning." In fact, there are two members of Andy Butler's ensemble who are onstage exclusively to dance; the exceptionally fit man on stage right did some helicoptering, some writhing, and something that looked like an approximation of Cossack dancing. And while we'll cop to having been a little skeptical about how "Blind" would sound without Antony Hegarty's distinctive vocals, rest assured that we barely knew he wasn't there.
As for Hot Chip, they're not much for stage banter -- apart from explaining at the beginning that Joe Goddard was absent because his wife is due to have a baby this week, Alexis Taylor et al. kept it to a minimum, opting instead to pack their set with as many crowd-pleasers as possible. They opened with "And I Was A Boy From School," which drew appreciative cheers and gave a good indication for how the rest of the night would go: "One Life Stand" and "Over and Over" both made early appearances, the latter with a nifty new instrumental arrangement. As for the encore -- well, what better to play for three thousand sweaty people who've just spent three hours dancing than "Ready for the Floor?"
