Chromeo’s love of cheesy, ‘80s-style sonics and even cheesier sense of romance keeps on pimp-strutting more than two decades after David “Dave 1” Macklovitch and Patrick “P-Thugg” Gemayel joined forces. The duo first met in the mid-‘90s while attending a fancy French college in Montreal, eventually joking that they are the “only successful Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture.”
Chromeo’s second full-length album, 2007’s Fancy Footwork, introduced the duo to a wider audience behind electro-funk tunes as catchy as they are absurd (cue “Tenderoni,” which offers this lyrical insight: “For sure if I tell you how to do my dance/Baby, then you’ll let me get in those pants.” But don’t get the wrong idea — these guys are tongue-in-cheek playful rather than outright lewd. Need touchstones? Think Kool & the Gang, Prince’s Dirty Mind, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Beck’s Midnite Vultures rolled into one ecstatic emission.
“It was really the fact that we both discovered this kind of music at the same time,” Macklovitch said of the duo’s influences in an interview with NPR earlier this year. “You know, being from immigrant families, our parents did not listen to funk music or even, like, any kind of '80s-influenced music. Nobody listened to Prince or Sly and the Family Stone, really. So, when we were teenagers, we kind of discovered all these sounds through hip-hop music and the original samples and so on. We fell in love with it together, and that passion and that fascination never left us. And with Chromeo, the idea was to draw from that to create something of our own.”
Chromeo’s sixth album, this year’s Adult Contemporary, finds the duo moving into a more — wait for it — mature direction. Album opener “(I Don’t Need A) New Girl” admits the playboys are ready for a less promiscuous approach: “But, baby, you keep all my attention/Since you stepped in the frame/I feel like this is an education/There’s new rules to the game.”
That’s not to say the hook-laden arrangements aren’t as saucy as ever — Macklovitch’s sing-speak vocals and glitchy guitar work and Gemayel’s versatile musicality (he handles keyboards, bass, synths and talk box) remain the focal point, driven home via glossy production work so sleek it makes Chappell Roan seem gritty.
Chromeo & The Midnight play MegaCorp Pavilion on Oct. 10 at 6 p.m. More info: promowestlive.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat's Oct. 2 print edition.
