Picking a favourite album is next to impossible for me. When I committed my life to music journalism it was in large part because music itself inspires me. The freedom of expression, the art of interpretation, the thrill of innovation, the joy of transience, the ability to simultaneously reflect and shape the surrounding environment, and the opportunity to be let into another individual’s deeply person realm, it all stimulates and enlivens me.

As a result of this wide scale love affair with the music I’ve never really had a solitary favourite album, no more than I enjoy a solitary style. I love pop music, and it’s all pop music to me, everything from the 1950’s onwards, and I love exposing myself to new variations, new insights, and even old recycled packages remodeled by a contemporary mind. I adore the broader narrative, the grand dramatic sweep from Buddy Holly and Billie Holliday to The Weeknd and Cher Lloyd. So choosing just one record is a cruel, I hate desert island disks, the whole notion fills me with venom, only one record? What’s the point, reducing a seventy year journey to thirty two minutes? That has never been, and never will be my style. I’d sooner pick between Pollock and Wery or Di Caprio and Willis, why settle for just one?

Still despite my reservations I narrowed my choice down to three albums Is This It by The Strokes, the album that made me a music fan, Please, Please Me by The Beatles, the album that encapsulates exactly what I love about music, and Coming On Strong by Hot Chip (the album that I’ve decided to run with).

There are few things I hate in music (or art in general) more than irony. It’s easy, it’s an inbuilt an excuse not to try, and it’s a lazy way of looking more credible and incisive than you actually are. It’s my mortal enemy musically, but I’m a deeply ironic person, I use it all the time, I love to joke around and debase what should be serious issues. It’s annoying because it’s such an easy trap to fall into.

So why I am I moaning about irony? Because Hot Chip are practically drowning in it, and so is Coming On Strong. From eye rolling snide shots at wannabe gangsters (“Playboy”) and nerdy white Prince parodies (“Down With Prince”), to consciously under cutting the beauty of music and the entire industry mythos with a Stevie Wonder joke (“Keep Fallin’”), Coming On Strong is steeped in silliness…but it’s all one big façade.

Behind a thick layer of irony, a lot intentional amateurism, and a protective wall of “don’t take us seriously” jokes lies an incredibly fragile, nervous and sentimental soul. By juxtaposing Coming On Strong’s most touching moments with a broad arsenal of quirky baselines and awkward in-jokes, Hot Chip not only obscure, but enhance the poignancy of a deeply touching album. Coming On Strong speaks of men who can’t communicate in a straight face to face manner, cherished memories who’s resonance is deep and personal but who appear on the surface shallow and vulgar, and most of all mundane hopes, dreams and heartbreak.

Coming On Strong is life in the middle. It’s life away from the extremes of romance and tragedy, it’s a record for people who grin and bear it, and who dream depressed and alone. “Shining Escalade” is perhaps the most beautifully depressingly aspirational anthem ever committed to record. Joe Goddard’s humour is revealed to be a shallow defensive mechanism as the man who early looked down his nose and joked about “Driving In My Pegoet, With 20 In Rims, Blasting Out Yo La Tenga, Driving Round Putney With My Top Down” on “Playboy”, now asks his lover to hide under the covers as he dreams about driving a ”Shiny SUV” so ”People See Me Different”. It’s crushingly humdrum, and intensely human, and it’s perfectly accompanied by a clicking beat and some intentional loose guitar work.

Better yet it’s followed by “Baby Said”, another subversive master stroke, that appears a one note joke when heard in isolation, but at the end of an hour long LP its a crushing final blow. The final defeatist shrug of a man caged by circumstance (a dull 9 to 5 job, a homely relationship, a fear of the unknown, a life of insignificant commitments that prove sadly imperative) “Baby Said” is a song for the depressive who reads fantasy novels and the travel section dreaming of adventure or, more astutely, respite, but instead settles for the status quo. Or to put it far more succinctly; “My Baby Said She Wanted Some Action; I Said “Baby, I Can’t Give You That, I’m A Simple Man.””

By the end, and for Coming On Strong it truly is the end; the question is not will Joe get to live out his dreams and give his girlfriend the life she’s deserves, but  instead when his race is run, and he’s been worn down to his last ember, will Joe be able to still “Bring Or Fake A Smile”. Heavy stuff, from an album that’s supposed to a be a goofy experiment in stoner aesthetics and juxtaposition.

That however, is not the right note to end on, as Coming On Strong is not a depressing record, it’s heartbreaking and defeatist, but it also revels in glorious moments of recollection. “Crap Kraft Dinner” is a masterpiece, as Alexis, in sublime voice, recalls his fondest memory. In a room, drunk, with his closest (and possibly most fleeting) friends, he allows himself a solitary moment of reflection, to observe and capture what is undoubtedly a transient moment of joy. There is nothing special about “Crap Kraft Dinner”, it’s devoid of heroic gesture but it’s full of warmth (and sinister overtones), it captures that moment when you look up and realise: this isn’t going to last, but I’ve never been this happy and probably never will be again.

Coming On Strong is a masterpiece. It takes everything bad about music (parody, cynicism, ironic amateurism and a lack of ambition or intent) and transforms it all into one of the most piercingly poignant end products imaginable. It puts up a stiff façade and slowly strips it all away, exposing inner fragility and making the depressed dreamer and the reflective underachieve the star, in an entirely human manner.

Hot Chip and Coming On Strong are both incredible contrived and yet utterly un-contrived at the same time; it’s a feat that is near impossible to reproduce and makes Coming On Strong my favourite album. David Hayter