The CanCon Catalogue: Hot Hot Heat Test New Sound at Nanaimo Show

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Hot Hot Heat Test New Sound at Nanaimo Show

Posted by Andrew Kurjata Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009

It's hard to say what role Hot Hot Heat play in the Canadian music scene. The Victoria quartet (who have gone through a few original members over the years) have been around since '99, though you could argue that their modern incarnation didn't start until 2002 with the release of their debut full-length Make Up the Breakdown. Even so, that puts them smack dab in the middle of the garage rock revival of the early 00s, following the 2001 releases of the Strokes' Is This It and White Blood Cells from the White Stripes but preceding (and anticipating) the dancier new-wave sound that would be cemented by Franz Ferdinand. At the same time, they were one of the first independent Canadian rock groups to start making waves around the world and usher in the modern golden era of CanCon, pioneering the movement alongside the New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene, generating northern buzz a full three years before Arcade Fire blew everything out of the water with Funeral.

"Bandages" from Make Up the Breakdown"

And yet, despite the critical and popular success that Breakdown achieved, Hot Hot Heat never quite reached the status of musical geniuses given to any of those groups, even though Make Up the Breakdown is one of those rare beasts where every song could be a hit single, and the follow-up Elevator saw them successfully transition from a singles band to an album band that still managed to put out great singles (in the form of "You Owe Me an I.O.U." and "Middle of Nowhere"). And since they failed to secure genius status, that meant by the time 2007's Happiness Ltd. came out the musical elite were prepared to write them off as has-beens who were just riding the scene created by other, more talented groups, even though Hot Hot Heat were there from the start and have released more stuff worth listening to than the Strokes. Regardless of how middle-of-the-road you take Happiness to be, it's certainly no less listenable than any of the last three Jack White projects. All things being equal, it's Bloc Party who should be opening for H.H.H. on their Canadian tour, and not the other way around.

"Middle of Nowhere" from Elevator

Revisionist history being what it is, however, Hot Hot Heat now find themselves in the unfavourable position of being one-hit wonder bargain-bin fodder unless they can mount what will have to be, regardless of how inaccurate the term is, a genuine comeback. And last night at Nanaimo's the Queens Pub, they gave a preview of what that might sound like. Having had to drive in from Victoria just to check them out (what's with snubbing your hometown, Hot Hot Heat?) I unfortunately missed the first ten minutes of the set, so can't comment on that. But walking in, if it weren't for the familiar voice of Steve Bays moving over top of things, I could have sworn I walked in on some sort of punk-metal fusion band. This was to be expected, perhaps, with the addition of bassist Parker Bossley of the spastic Fake Shark, Real Zombie and Bays warning Spinner magazine that the new album actually started as a side-project with the goal of making "a crazy album that sounded like it was from the future and it wasn't anything that we had done before."

While it's hard to judge live performances of what are essentially works in progres, I think it's fair to say this new sound draws on groups like At the Drive-In and even Rage Against the Machine for inspiration, because while HHH aren't going as far down the heavy-fusion road as either of these groups, they're definitely headed in that direction. It actually makes sense when you consider how rhythm heavy the group has always been and the fact that lyrically Bays has always had more in common with the verbosity of rap and speed metal than he has with most minimalist rock bands. What will be key for making this sound like a natural evolution on record will be how high up in the mix Bays vocals are and how much of his hook-writing skills he retains. Unfortunately, that is not something I could judge last night thanks to a rather muddy sound in the high-end.

All that being said, though, if you are a Hot Hot Heat fan of old, do not be discouraged from checking them out when they come to your hometown-- and if you never have, definitely go. They retain the energy that gave them a reputation for being a worthwhile live show, and managed to get the audience packed on the dancefloor even when they were playing multiple previously unheard songs in a row. And they are not stingy on songs from either Breakdown or Elevator, playing all the singles from the latter and at least "Bandages" and "Talk to Me, Dance With Me" from the former to close out the night (I would guess they opened with something from Breakdown, too, but cannot guarantee this). However, if you want to hear Bays ask the crowd "Are you ready to be burned by Hot Hot Heat?" as he did last night, you're probably out of luck. As he said, "That's the first and last time you'll hear me make a band-name related pun."

Hot Hot Heat on tour:

23 Apr 2009