Hot Chip had no easy task transforming the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall into an electro pop dance floor at 8pm on a school night. It is a room that feels designed for reverence, with the pipe organ towering silently upstage.
Supporting act Haiku Hands arrived with a mandate for revolt. They had the unenviable job of coaxing a seated, midweek crowd out of their seats and into the party the evening deserved. By the end of their set, peaking with their anthemic track Not About You – a playful middle finger of a track – the audience was in full dance mode, up and out of seats.
It was a perfect coupling of opener to main act, with Haiku Hands bringing the same fun and play of Hot Chip but with a little more edge and aggression that helped shunt the night in motion.
When Hot Chip took the stage, a nostalgic familiarity filled the concert hall, taking audiences back to 2007 when Hot Chip first hit Australian shores as part of the now dearly departed Big Day Out’s national festival line up.
Hot Chip review – quick links
Undeniable musicianship
Hot Chip subvert every rockstar trope in the book with their warm and friendly stage presence, bringing an endearing awkwardness to their dancing but painted in the razzle dazzle of a light show on a heavy backdrop of stage haze. Once the first wave of synth hits, their sheer musicianship is undeniable.
2025 saw the release of Joy in Repetition, a ‘best of’ album of well-known bangers such as Ready for the Floor and Over and Over. It also introduced us to their newest single Devotion.
Seeing Hot Chip live isn’t just a nostalgic stroll through the back catalogue, it’s proof of their ensemble skills and the flexibility of the catchy hooks and grooves they’ve crafted over decades. In this Sydney Festival two-night run, each track was given room to live and breathe, expanding far beyond the polished edges of the studio recordings.
At the centre of it all was the voice of Alexis Taylor. Live, his distinctly elastic, alienesque vocals provided a clarity that cut through the dense, building layers of sound.
Finding joy in repetition
The band titled their recent anthology Joy In Repetition in a nod to both their 2006 hit Over and Over and the Prince song of the same name, and there’s a boldness in that labelling. There is joy in repetition and the repetition of the familiar, with 80s synth brought into a still fresh and hypnotic, future-focused sound, inviting the audience to accept the trance invitation.
At the Sydney Opera House, Hot Chip’s percussive playfulness, combined with a never-ending range of new sounds, guided audiences through distinct aural worlds.
Watching them command the Sydney Opera House in 2026, it’s hard not to reflect on the 25-year output of their career to date. They broke into the mainstream consciousness around 2008, and while the industry has shifted around them, Hot Chip has remained remarkably consistent.
There is a deep comfort in these live versions and a sense of a band that has found the joy of doing the ’same’ thing for over two decades – making great music, with broad appeal outside exclusively synth pop fans – and in doing so, have become British (and adopted Australian) musical icons.
Hot Chip performed at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall as part of the Sydney Festival on 14 and 15 January.
This article is published as part of ArtsHub’s Creative Journalism Fellowship, an initiative supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
