In 2008’s retro-disco dance party, the chaps in the Chap represent the assemblage of brainy, aloof snobs sneering at everyone from a dark corner. They find all of this dance music stuff a little bit ridiculous, but at the same time they can’t imagine being anywhere else. Imagine them deriding Hercules and Love Affair as embarrassingly openhearted. They think Cut Copy tries too hard, and IDM isn’t…intelligent enough. “Well, what do you have to offer, anyway?” someone finally asks, and then we have Mega Breakfast, a precisely brilliant compilation of bullish drum loops, arrhythmic guitar squelches and wormlike pop hooks that imbed themselves in the brain. The Chap unabashedly mocks its audience with its lyrics, which seem specifically designed to have you making a fool out of yourself at a bus stop or a coffee counter not through any fault of your own but because you can’t stop from singing the trite affirmations out loud, “Come on, come on, Cloners, clone another me!” or “Come into my bathroom showroom/Approach me slowly, visit my body.” The Chap has dutifully sucked down the myopic, club-centric culture and now spits it back at us with extra doses of sugar. But being pandered to, or made fun of, rarely feels this good. From the violin caterwauls on “Take It in the Face” to the Bowie-spliced-with-Blink-182 arena-pop of “Proper Rock,” the lyrics of which form an extended joke about empty populism, Mega Breakfast is all relentless, delicious parody.
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