Listen: Hot Hot Heat, Elevator

By By Joseph Sibinski

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Hot Hot Heat

Elevator

Remember “Bandages,” that fun and memorable little song that took weeks and months and years to get out of your head? Well now that you finally got it out, here’s another 15 reasons to start beating your head in with a tack hammer. Yes, Hot Hot Heat is back with their latest album, Elevator, an infectious little collection of new wave pop-rock.

Elevator features a delightful mixture of mildly distorted and energetically-played guitars, peppy drum beats, spunky pianos and organs and snappy bass lines that blend into an overall sound that is both busy and amusing. The band is probably most recognizable, however, by Steve Bays’ fun and playful, yet frantic and distracted, vocal stylings. He manages to generate a tension/release clause with just about every measure of the song and still build the sonic and contextual tension through the entire song until it ends up in a giant musical knot. That sounds confusing, but the songs are all lighthearted and still palatable. You will almost definitely find yourself singing them in the shower, at the supermarket, humming them in class, and you’ll probably even wake up to them having been playing in your dreams (did I mention it’s really catchy?).

Elevator is a fun and enjoyable album; great timing for a spring/summer release.

I recommend this album for fans of Franz Ferdinand, Something Corporate, Weezer and Built to Spill.

Grade: B-

—Joe Sibinski

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