Vancouver-based band Hot Hot Heat’s first major album since 2002’s Makeup the Breakdown clearly lacks the punch of its predecessor. However with that said, one can still pick up any of the band’s albums knowing they’ve purchased an adventure into fast-pace indie-garage rock. Although they join a crew of new-edge garage-rockers like the Strokes, Vines and Franz Ferdinand, they’ve kept their style clean by keeping songs different and fresh.
The group officially formed in 1999, however bassist Dustin Hawthorne and singer/keyboardist Steven Bays met in 1995. After playing under several different names and in different bands the duo met drummer Paul Hawley in 1998. The group picked up guitarist Dante DeCaro in 2000, though he left the band in 2004. Still, some of DeCaro’s contributions are present on the new album.
Elevator’s strongest appeal is its dedication to producing music that revolves around HHH’s lyrical talent. They’re not what you expect from a genre oftentimes dominated by boring lyrics and HHH has anything but. Songs such as “You Owe Me An IOU,” clearly exemplify the band’s poetic tendencies with lyrics like, “Tight fisted with his compliments, it didn’t seem to bother/ Him that talk is even cheaper told in bulk/ And the only thing constant was the constant reminder/ He’d never change.”
Other songs depend on Bays’ obvious ability to twist words to work, like in the electric-charged “Island of the Honest Man,” which opens with, “I was picked up and then dropped off in a culture/ counter-clockwise turned around.”
Elevator is able to maintain MTB’s electricity through several songs, although the freshness dies toward the latter half of the album. The album’s first single, “Goodnight Goodnight,” projects the band’s dedication to make sure its fans will keep dancing. However, the honor of most charged song easily falls to “Island of the Honest Man,” with enough raw fun to get more than just your foot tapping and your happy factor up 10 points.
While the band will always maintain a sense of lyrical confidence and never a loss of intensity, there is a sense of redundancy and disinterest toward the latter half of Elevator not present on Makeup the Breakdown. The reasons are multiple.
First, MTB was an album considerably more creative from all angles, making sure every song rocked harder, newer and fresher every step of the way. But the lift stops rising in Elevator by track six or seven because the listener knows what to expect from the remainder of the album — more of what they just heard. It’s particularly evident, since the verses of tracks four and five (“Ladies and Gentleman” and “You Owe Me an IOU”), are disappointingly similar.
Still, some may believe that the absence of DeCaro, who left the band because he did not enjoy touring, may have also leant to a loss of creative juice to support a true MTB successor. Additionally, music from Elevator is considerably less adventurous than MTB, where the band experimented with organs and electronics to rock fans. MTB’s success was also dependant on the amount of flair Bays and Co. dedicated to the album. The same is not true in Elevator, where songs have become inhibited and perhaps, too mature. Songs leave listeners wishing they were listening to MTB.
Still, Elevator serves as an excellent introduction to HHH and their indie-garage band mix of music, where many bands have failed. Bands like the Strokes and the Vines, which have dug themselves a notch as lo-fi kings, have not introduced music with the level of intelligence or clarity. HHH has given the genre exactly what it has been lacking.
Grade: B
