Paris in the Spring, the title of Alexis Taylor’s latest solo album, isn’t just meant to cue up visions of blooming cherry trees in the Jardin des Plantes, or jambon-beurres enjoyed en plein air. It also references a psychological test: When presented in a certain way, the phrase “Paris in the the spring” is often read aloud by test subjects without the extra “the,” a trick that reveals how brains skip over words they deem unimportant. A single word reveals a profound self-deception—if we missed that “the,” what else are we missing?
Solo projects offer a similar psychological test. When artists in successful groups venture off on their own, their audiences must analyze their work with a new mindset, re-calculating their strengths and weaknesses, the baseline assessment always some form of: “Do they still have the sauce alone?” Alexis Taylor’s main gig is dance band Hot Chip, a group with a 26-year legacy, and by now his solo output has settled into a predictable counterpoint to the group’s work: just as finely crafted, but usually more delicate and less exuberant. Silence, from 2021, was a pensive, subdued exploration of Taylor’s tinnitus diagnosis, and 2016’s Piano, featuring just piano and Taylor’s voice, was about as minimal as you could get.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Now Taylor sounds thrilled to jettison any assumptions about what an Alexis Taylor solo album should be. Paris in the Spring is, as he put in the album announcement, about “freedom—from constraints, from preconceptions, and from genre.” What that looks like in practice is a collection of 10 songs that range from glum balladry to cautiously ecstatic nu-disco, created with a high-class list of collaborators, including Air’s Nicolas Godin (the album was primarily recorded at Godin’s Paris studio) and Étienne de Crécy. In its refusal to adhere to a particular theme or sound, Paris in the Spring comes across as a little diffuse, but when everything locks in, the results are transcendent.
Taylor’s current enthusiasm for abundant, immersive arrangements yields songs that are densely layered but still light, like one of those cakes that’s just a huge tower of crepes. First single “Out of Phase” stacks a lot of busy elements—multipart chorus vocals, playful bass, clattering new-age drums, a sultry guest spot from Lola Kirke—that magically meld into an airy, easy club track. Opening song “Your Only Life” has a McCartney II flair, layering plucky synths and a guitar lick that never ignites, but does smolder quite pleasantly. And, true to Taylor’s claims for the album, the album’s genre blast radius is wide: “Fainting by Numbers” is a New Romantic-style ballad, “mp3s can make you cry” has a country-ish twinkle (and a tasteful touch of vocoder), and there’s an intriguingly wonky electronic cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” tossed in for good measure. Taylor’s voice, as guileless and elegant as ever, ties together what could have been a random-feeling assemblage of tunes in a silky bow.
