Date Night: Chromeo Live!

On their 2020 EP, Quarantine Casanova, electro-funk maestros Chromeo were adjusting to life in the early COVID era, expressing their amorous intimations through references to face masks, protective gloves, and Clorox wipes. But with Date Night: Chromeo Live!, Dave 1 and P-Thugg are preparing us for life on the other side of the pandemic. Recorded on various dates of the band’s 2019 US tour, Date Night was originally intended as a showcase for the duo’s first-ever excursion with a full live band, which allowed them to live out their ultimate ’80s Minneapolis “heavy-metal gospel” fantasies (and also alleviate the inferiority complex they’ve always felt next to crack dance-rock acts like LCD Soundsystem). Spanning 20 tracks over 85 minutes, the record functions as both a greatest-hits overview of the duo’s career to date, as well as a virtual-reality simulation of the breathlessly euphoric Chromeo live experience. But coming after a year when concert venues have sat empty, Date Night has taken on a more altruistic mission. “Live music is tentatively returning in late summer, early fall; this album is coming out in June, so I feel like this is the pregame we all need,” Dave 1 tells Apple Music. “It’s a little bit of hip-shaking nostalgia for what we’ve been missing, and a little taste of the funkiness that is to come. We have to rehearse some dance moves, people got to learn to clap again. In a way, this album is very much a public service.” Here, Dave talks us through some of the set’s highlights.
Funklordz Intro “One of my best musical memories with P was when Lollapalooza came to Montreal in 1994. It was Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and George Clinton. With George Clinton, we thought we were going to get ‘tear the roof of the Mothership,’ and what we got instead was a hard-rock band. And we were very, very confused! We were like, ‘Wow, these guys are shredding—what’s going on?’ But that is the funk live aesthetic in certain ways. So, we had to replicate that. Obviously, this is the intro to [2007’s] Fancy Footwork, but it’s the over-the-top, dramatic entrance that we needed.”
Come Alive (feat. Toro y Moi) “We first connected with Chaz [Bear, aka Toro y Moi] right before [2014’s] White Women came out. Every one of my friends who was good-looking happened to be a huge Toro y Moi fan, and it made me tremendously insecure. And so, I said, ‘You know what? I need this kid on my album,’ so I just reached out to him. We got together with him and banged out the song in a couple of hours. He was in our video, and we’ve played live shows together ever since, and we’ve enjoyed a musical friendship. He’s the only guest on this live album. This is always one of the first songs that we play in the live set, and Chaz came out to our Los Angeles show. It was just cool to have him there. There’s a really tender moment where I take my guitar solo, and you can hear Chaz say, ‘Go, Dave!’ That always makes my heart flutter.”
(My Girl Is Calling Me A) Liar “We always play First Avenue in Minneapolis. Instead of moving to a bigger venue, we’ll just do two nights at First Avenue, because of the historical and symbolic implications of that place [where Prince made his name early on]. By now, the crowd there understands our reverence for Minneapolis funk. On record, ‘Liar’ was our attempt at a Minneapolis funk song, and on this version, we break into that Morris Day & The Time groove at the end, and that’s one of my favorite parts. Out of all the different strands of funk music, the Minneapolis funk strand is our favorite. It’s just this really interesting kind of playing—it’s like the opposite of that delicate James Brown touch. You just smash it, and yet somehow, it’s still groovy. And you always play a little bit ahead of the beat, and that gives it that frenetic energy.”
Needy Girl “This song is truly the reason why we’re here. ‘Needy Girl’ was the first time I sang into a microphone. It’s the first song that I wrote lyrics for, and it was the first time we put something out that people really responded to. I still look at ‘Needy Girl’ with amazement, because if it wasn’t for this song, we wouldn’t have a career. ‘Needy Girl’ garnered just enough interest in those early internet days to make people care enough for us to put out another album—and that album was Fancy Footwork, and we were off to the races after that.”
Don’t Sleep “I think the songs on our last album [2018’s Head Over Heels] were really good live. In fact, I like the way it translated live even more than the way it translated on the record. ‘Don't Sleep’ is really special to me, because this is the Washington, D.C. version, and we break out into this go-go jam at the end. That’s something we could only do with a band, something only a certain kind of player can play. When we break into the go-go thing, I’m like, ‘OK, this is why we’ve made this decision to transition into a live band.’”
Count Me Out/Jealous (I Ain’t With It) “When we play as a duo, we end our show with other songs. But with the live band, we were like, ‘This has got to have an explosive ending.’ ‘Count Me Out’ is another Minneapolis funk one, and then it medleys into ‘Jealous’ and you get your tempo change. I remember the first time we rehearsed this arrangement; I was listening to it with my brother [DJ/producer A-Trak], and he was like, ‘It’s borderline Super Bowl.’ But we like to turn bad taste into good taste, so I was like, ‘You know what? That’s exactly what it needs to be: over-the top, borderline Super Bowl!’”