Well, good thing Terry Miller’s here to correct me, as you’d have no luck looking up Nile Rodgers the way I spelled it (I’ve changed it below, but the print edition will have you querying someone named “Niles Roger”). Sorry about that, and don’t let it stop you from buying this fine album when it comes out tomorrow.

HOT CHIP

Made in the Dark

(DFA/Astralwerks)

***

In the initial moments of Made in the Dark, you can just barely hear a cheering carnival crowd and a rollercoaster clicking uphill as the detuned synths of “Out at the Pictures” fade in. Appropriately, Hot Chip’s third full-length is both a festive party and a thrilling series of ups and downs.

From the giddy anticipation of the intro track, the album dives into a run of dance-floor bangers. “Shake a Fist” plays Todd Rundgren’s “sounds of the studio” game, sneaking the tinkling chimes of “Over & Over” in between the genuinely startling synth stabs. Lead single “Ready for the Floor” is an office-rock anthem, a romantic call to wallflowers hung on the odd, pep-talk refrain of “You’re my number-one guy.” “Bendable Poseable” is a sinister and funky anatomical twister, the first of a few songs on the album to deal in darkly comic combat images (themes that climax in the tensely rollicking “Hold On” and resolve with the relaxed absurdities of “Wrestlers”).

Other lyrics reveal anxieties about heaven and hell and a preoccupation with minding life’s gaps (“There are holes in what we do/There is a hole between me and you”). This latter tack is a marked change from Coming on Strong, an album that delighted in its own distance from the hiphop and R&B it sampled.

The title track is a trad-soul ballad that highlights singer Alexis Taylor’s delicate vocals. “One Pure Thought” is the surprise hit of the album, a song that perfectly synthesizes all the best of Hot Chip—sly, referential rhymes that’ll have you Googling “Nile Rodgers”; wicked club thump; Graceland-inspired lilts and harmonies; the interplay of Taylor’s fey croon and Joe Goddard’s baritone bluster. The album loses some steam after “Don’t Dance” with a pair of plodding ballads, but still, Made in the Dark is a great ride. ERIC GRANDY