LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hot Hot Heat
built 212 days ago
Believe it or not, Hot Hot Heat did not start out as the dancefloor mavericks they are today. Born not from any major metropolitan city, these boys hail from the mean streets of Victoria, British Columbia. Active players in the town's punk scene since 1999, it wasn't until about two years ago that they were restless and wanted to make a change in their sound. This decision led to the dismissal of their first singer. Taking his place was Steve Bays, who would now front the band as well as continue on active keyboard duty. "It was actually really weird," says Steve of the transition from background player to frontman.
Source:
Twelve new originals from Hot Hot Heat, one of the most acclaimed young bands in modern music, Elevator is the eagerly awaited follow-up to 2002's Make Up The Breakdown. It's ... the result of over two years of virtually non-stop international touring that earned the Vancouver-based band a fervent worldwide following. "The revolution begins now," was how one reviewer put it, but as Elevator amply proves, the insurrection is just getting started.
Source:
In May of 2002, Hot Hot Heat headed into Vancouver\'s Mushroom Studios to record a new full-length with NW recording legend Jack Endino. The result, Make up the Breakdown, shows a seemingly effortless ability to craft melody, the kind that doesn’t merely get stuck in your head, but that moves in, puts down roots, starts a family. Paul and Dustin tenaciously lock into a groove with Dante\'s guitar playing bringing to mind a young Johnny Marr, and lyrics and keyboard lines tumbling urgently from Steve. Make up the Breakdown replicates the breathless excitement of the band’s live show; 10 tracks of complex, rhythmic art-punk. Most of these songs have to do with sex and/or the frustrations of life in “this town.” And, really, what’s more important? More than New Wave revivalists with an innate talent for catchy songs, Hot Hot Heat blend angular post-punk twitch with danceable pop, (finally) making a good case for white dopes on punk to get on the good foot
Source:
More and more though, bands like Hot Hot Heat, Franz Ferdinand, the Postal Service, the Walkmen, Death Cab for Cutie, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Modest Mouse are collapsing that distinction. Indie in ethos, these acts made unprecedented mainstream media inroads in 2004. With Franz Ferdinand’s "Take Me Out" as its flagship, indie took back rock radio from new metal, mall punk, and all that other Nickelbullshit that’s run the road for almost a decade. Just as important, indie rock has appeared with unusual prominence in television and film: TV drama The OC once teased an entire story line out of a Walkmen concert, and in Garden State, Natalie Portman’s character says without a smirk that the Shins "will change your life." Indie rock has become shorthand for purity — freedom from corruption, really — and as Intelligent But Heartfelt Youth Music, there’s hardly a better choice.
Source:
Hot Hot Heat's version of indie-rock is so sugar-glazed that it often falls outside any reasonable definition of the genre: "Let Me In," the first single from Happiness Ltd., is so massively radio-ready, it nearly reaches total facelessness. But because the Canadian band keeps one foot in the indie ghetto—it still recalls The Walkmen, among others, on occasion—it never falls headfirst into the pop abyss. It's telling, though, that the best song on Happiness is a re-recorded "5 Times Out Of 100," which originally appeared on the band's debut Sub Pop EP. Along with the charging, piano-led "My Best Fiend," it lends a bit of danger to a set that sorely needs it: Soupy ballads (like the egregious "Outta Heart") and straight-ahead pop songs ("Good Day To Die") feel like labored, borderline-dishonest attempts to broaden a scope that might be better left narrow.
Source:
Hot Hot Heat's sound appears to have been appropriated by a number of bands over the last year or so, with Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads and Bloc Party all leading the way in synth driven, angular guitar music. Do Steve or Paul feel influential in any way?
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Hot Hot Heat