Chromeo&rsquo;s new album Adult Contemporary, which spans a wide range of genres, keeps the good times going.

Photography by Zackary Michael

<a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-am-cringe-but-i-am-free">&ldquo;I am cringe, but I am free&rdquo;</a> is an oft-posted meme that contains an important truth: trying to be conventionally &ldquo;cool&rdquo; is a joyless, sisyphean task. Chromeo, the electro-funk duo, are far from cringe, but they&rsquo;ve avoided being mired in the self-seriousness that bogs down so many similar acts. Their ability to blend levity with earnestness made the band welcome counterprogramming when they emerged during the too-cool-to-care 2000s <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/categories/music">music</a> scene, and it has been key to their lengthy run of success.
&ldquo;We never had that indie gravitas,&rdquo; says David &ldquo;Dave 1&rdquo; Macklovitch, one half of Chromeo and the group&rsquo;s main vocalist. &ldquo;We came from either the Beastie Boys or A Tribe Called Quest or Steely Dan, which are all groups that have a sense of self-awareness and humor.&rdquo;

Macklovitch and Patrick &ldquo;P-Thugg&rdquo; Gemayel have been making music together for roughly 30 years, since meeting at Montreal&rsquo;s Coll&egrave;ge Stanislas. Both prodigious multi-instrumentalists, producers, and songwriters, the duo released its first album in 2004 and has spent two decades putting out meticulously crafted, yet winking, music, paying homage to the vast range of genres they love without simply regurgitating influences like Zapp and Giorgio Moroder. On recent projects, the band branched out sonically, but a run of singles in 2023 preceding this year&rsquo;s Adult Contemporary signaled a return to the core of Chromeo, albeit with the added perspective of two 40-plus-year-old career artists.
&ldquo;We had the itch to make stuff that felt like electro, to bring back the electro funk from our [earlier] sound. We felt that had been missing,&rdquo; Macklovitch said. &ldquo;And also, we're just looking back and being like, &lsquo;Remember when we started playing shows in New York and there were all these Vice magazine parties that we would play at?&rsquo; What were the songs that were playing back then, and what was the vibe? That drove it.&rdquo;

"We never had that indie gravitas."

Adult Contemporary scratches that old-school Chromeo itch with a host of eminently danceable songs about breakups (&ldquo;Personal Effects,&rdquo; &ldquo;Ballad of the Insomniacs,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Replacements&rdquo; are among the best). Consistent with this back-to-basics, Williamsburg warehouse party nostalgia, the group tapped electronic musician Morgan Geist to mix the LP. Sonically, the album is brimming with warm analog synthesizers, pumping, bass-forward percussion, and Gemayle&rsquo;s signature work on the talkbox. Macklovitch is not a belter, but his catchy, rhythmic cadences and tender falsetto compensate for his less powerful voice. During our interview, the duo riff on how they&rsquo;ve always approached music from a left-field perspective: They can&rsquo;t make &ldquo;the perfect funk record, like Bruno Mars can do so easily.&rdquo;

&ldquo;We love those records, but that's off the table for us anyway, because we have neither the talent nor the resources to do that. And with my voice, it wouldn't work,&rdquo; Macklovitch says. &ldquo;So we had to find out what's going to work for us. That's from day one, when we did &lsquo;Needy Girl,&rsquo; we were like, &lsquo;All right, how can we make this work?&rsquo;&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s the kind of comment that would ring as false modesty from other artists, but Macklovitch and Gemayel have spent those aforementioned 30 years (and then some) proving their deep, unpretentious love of music in all its forms. When they say they wish they could make a Bruno Mars&ndash;type record, you really believe them.

&ldquo;[We can&rsquo;t make] the perfect funk record, like Bruno Mars can do so easily.&rdquo;

On Adult Contemporary, Chromeo&rsquo;s encyclopedic musical knowledge is matched by a more sophisticated understanding of relationships in their songwriting than ever before. This comes most notably on &ldquo;CODA,&rdquo; an insightful exploration of codependency, with lines like &ldquo;Come give me your hip / I wanna be attached&rdquo; and &ldquo;You got brunch with your girls, I can tag along.&rdquo; The decision to draw on their earlier sound was also prompted by Chromeo&rsquo;s awareness of the relationship between lyrics and production, not wanting to alienate fans who&rsquo;ve been around since the beginning with a radical departure from the formula.
&ldquo;To compensate for all this and not make it a fully adult contemporary album, [we went] back to a rougher sound from the first two records,&rdquo; says Gemayel.

"Our career's just one big album."

Despite taking songwriting and music quite seriously, Chromeo has always had a lighthearted, almost comedic touch: from their &ldquo;Funklordz&rdquo; nickname to their artistic penchant for portraying themselves with glamorous women&rsquo;s legs on album-cover visuals. And Adult Contemporary&rsquo;s title isn&rsquo;t just a cheeky allusion to the serene genre of Josh Groban and Anne Murray; it&rsquo;s also a nod to Chromeo&rsquo;s more sophisticated lyrical content. &ldquo;BTS&rdquo; offers the most striking example, as Macklovitch laments the exhausting nature of &ldquo;grind-set&rdquo; culture and economic precariousness, all over pulsing disco. &ldquo;I swear to God, late stage capitalism is a curse&rdquo; is a line it&rsquo;s hard to picture the band slipping into any track on their first LP, She&rsquo;s in Control. The message hits, but it was designed not to be a stern speech into a megaphone&mdash;as Macklovitch says, &ldquo;[it&rsquo;s an] absurdist spin on it rather than a straight-faced political commentary, which I don&rsquo;t think we would ever be able to stomach.&rdquo;&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s been five-and-a-half years since Chromeo&rsquo;s last studio album&mdash;though they did give us a much-needed serotonin blast during the early COVID lockdowns with June 2020&rsquo;s Quarantine Casanova. Ironically, that lengthy wait period only proves the group&rsquo;s commitment to funk, dance, and disco, as they largely sat out the music&rsquo;s pop renaissance that was predominantly pushed by Beyonc&eacute;, Dua Lipa, and The Weeknd. During this period, Chromeo could have been aiming to capitalize in the name of chart success, but instead focused on collaborating with talented newcomers like Chicago rapper Ric Wilson and New York bass wunderkind Blu DeTiger.&nbsp;

For Chromeo, funk is both a genre and something more elemental&mdash;if it&rsquo;s not quite hydrogen, it&rsquo;s helium. &ldquo;Funk is an attribute. So there's funk in everything,&rdquo; Macklovitch explains, with Gemayel citing cross-genre collaborations between Bootsy Collins and Keith Richards, as well as Roger Troutman and Scritti Politti. In today&rsquo;s musical climate, looking to those names for inspiration feels charmingly retro, but it&rsquo;s all part of Chromeo&rsquo;s vision.&nbsp;

"There are a lot of disco songs about blue-collar, hard work&hellip;Our twist on that was like, &lsquo;Nowadays, you don't even have the energy for that. The rise-and-grind mindstate is going to eat you alive.&rsquo;"

The release of Adult Contemporary is coming with a mammoth world tour, expanding on the well-loved aesthetic the band displayed at 2023&rsquo;s Coachella. Chromeo may seem like a group who breaks their career into distinct eras, but Macklovitch explains that their approach is more holistic, a kind of continuum on which the funk never stops, even as its sound and purveyors grow and mature.
&ldquo;Our career's just one big album, in my mind at least,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;That's what gets me up in the morning, and it makes me want to do 30 demos a day.&rdquo;

Funk Duo Chromeo Gets Into the Groove

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