Send "The Chap " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 For as long as British people have been making pop music, they've been singing about class and social status. And over their seven-year existence, London pranksters the Chap have taken a considerable amount of glee in skewering social mores and aspirational affluence, with a manic, meta-pop approach that doesn't so much plant tongue in cheek as pierce it right through. But like the satirical UK periodical for which they're named, behind the Chap's broadly sardonic front lies a sincere hope for a better, more humane way of living. On album number five, Well Done Europe, the Chap continue their mission of mocking the finer things in life, but also zero in on the suppressed anxieties that go along with obtaining them. To that end, the Chap's ethos owes less to such esteemed class commentators as Ray Davies and Jarvis Cocker than to the likes of Kraftwerk and Steely Dan-- bands who observed high-society behavior not from the sidelines, but within it. Like the Chap's previous albums, Well Done Europe frantically plunders myriad pop subgenres-- post-punk, 1980s New Pop, hard rock, electro, pastoral psychedelic folk, krautrock, Afro-funk, laptop glitch-pop-- in a manner that reflects the ravenous consumerism and rat-race pressures detailed in its songs, complete with references to summer homes, frappuccinos, Shakira, white-water rafting vacations, characters with upper-crusty names like Holden and-- especially on-point in the wake of the Icelandic-volcano eruption-- the marvelous efficiency of European air travel. But on Well Done Europe, there's a more palpable sense of the emotional void that no amount of luxury goods can fill-- where the nocturnal techno-pop of "Few Horoscope" leans heavily on the trusty old post-punk saw of portraying romance as a mechanical process ("it's too late...to reboot/ The passion"), the similarly austere "Obviously" effectively ruminates on the eternal question of modern-day, computer-world dependency, as two disconnected voices repeatedly ask, "Is anybody still out there?" And if songs like "We'll See to Your Breakdown" and "Even Your Friend" stay true to the band's openly scornful, hyper-pop aesthetic, there's an insidious, understated allure to the bass-throbbed "Well Done You" and the shimmering jangle of "Pain Fan" seemingly designed to have the very middle-management types caricatured within tapping along on their Beemer steering wheels during the morning commute. On 2008's Mega Breakfast, the Chap cheekily declared their intent to make "proper songs for real folk!" Well Done Europe delivers a surprise punchline: they weren't joking....full text |
| Musicomh |
| "You will never have a job; you will never have much in this town again. We'll see to that because we hate you." So goes the chorus to We'll See To Your Breakdown. Whether ironic or not, it's a queasy, distant opening to an album that's so busy trying to be clever that it regularly fails to engage the listener. Like the magazine and urban movement of the same name, The Chap are all about posture, poise, and cultural knowingness. Sincerity? Gosh no, old chap - that's better left to the little people. You know, the sort of people who sport check shirts and moustaches without any sense of irony. To be a Chap, it's not enough just to know your pop culture backwards; you've got to demonstrate it at every opportunity. Well Done Europe takes us on a tour of just about everything from the last 40 years that's hip again; and, just for good measure, everything that might well be hip again in the near future. Sure, Hot Chip do exactly the same thing; but this tastes more like cold fish. And so, we get the cut-glass diction and considered non-musicianship of Brian Eno's '70s pop period. We get the wired, nerdy funk of Talking Heads' middle period. We get the blessed-out polyrhythms and Balearic guitars of The Beloved and the shoegazing crew of the early '90s. We get drumming from Adam And The Ants, syncopated B-Boy beats, elastic White Stripes riffs, and the detuned electronica of Boards Of Canada. Got all of that?...full text |
| Thelineofbestfi |
| Styled as ‘Dadaist pop’ (the Bandcamp preview of this album compresses all 41 minutes into three and a half) and coming across as only a band led by one Johannes von Weizsäcker surely can, The Chap are a singular proposition. Their primary concerns to date may be modern alternative’s most meta; on the one hand obervational, uber-arch verse-chorus oddness (‘I Am Oozing Emotion’, ‘Fun And Interesting’), on the other satire about modern musical tropes (‘Woop Woop’, ‘Proper Rock’), always studded with detached one-liners in clearly enunciated, deliberately higher class accents and enveloped inside carefully multi-layered electronic new wave prog-pop with beats and sudden diversions. “Let’s party!” centrally declares a song called ‘Nevertheless, The Chap’. The press release may refer to Well Done Europe as their “sell out”, but suffice to say only so in their peculiar minds. Last proper album Mega Breakfast was founded on mock motivational phrases and ideas of self-betterment. Some of that is taken to its logical conclusion on ‘Well Done You’, firing off banal apprisal compliments over a dark bassline. Otherwise, this one seems to be taking the opposite tack. “You will never have a job… we’ll see to that cos we hate you” glories ‘We’ll See To Your Breakdown’ amid slices of cut-up voices and violin stabs. “We had a holiday, it’s like dementia” offers ‘Pain Fun’, which you could call deceptively laid back, possessing a killer hook as it does, were it not for the title and sentiments. ‘Even Your Friend’ boasts drums that seem to be going at twice the speed of the rest of the song, pulsing synth and an increasingly frantic chorus that asks if we’re “ready for the summertime love” when the rest of the song doesn’t seem so at all....full text |
The Chap lyrics
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