The Hot Hot Heat - V32 Nov/Dec 2004

While they've been compared to everyone from The Cure to Billy Joel, Canadian dance-rockers HOT HOT HEAT manage to sound like pretty much no-one else. Led by keyboard-pumping frontman, the band produce a quirky brand of dance-friendly pop music that incorporates the best of 80's new-wave with good old indie-rock, winning them legions of fans and garnering high expectations for whatever they might do next. With one much-loved major label record and about a million spastic live shows under their belts, the band have come a long way from their native land of Victoria, BC. After two years of endless touring, the band eventually retreated home to the woods to craft their follow up, finally decamping to LA this summer to put the finishing touches on a new batch of tunes. Lead singer Steve Bays explains how, with the release of their new record, the group might just prove once and for all that they are the best thing to come out of Canada since Rush...and why uncontrollable dancing is always a good thing.

T. Cole Rachel: Hey Steve, how's it going?

Steve Bays: Things are great, actually. We're in LA finishing things up with the record, and it's turning out to be awesome, much different than I had expected.

TCR: How so?

SB: Well, we'd recorded about 25 demos back home before we got down here, but once we got into the studio the songs all went in different directions than we had expected. It's been really cool...and it feels like a big leap from our last record.

TCR: Now, I'd heard that you guys were out recording songs in a barn out in the Canadian wilderness somewhere, which seemed so funny to me. Your music is so un-country sounding.

SB: Basically, yeah. Our guitar player found this place about an hour outside of Victoria and we converted it into a very basic studio. It was cool, there were horses and deer and rabbits right outside our door. A very surreal environment to write a rock record in, you know? We just wanted the opposite the environment than what most bands in our position would do, which would probably be to rent out a space in LA and party a lot during the process. One thing I loved about it was that you had to drive an hour each way to get to the space, so you had that time to just relax in the van and listen to music for an hour and focus.

TCR: How long had it been since you recorded your last record?

SB: Over two years, so it was a much different experience this time around. I felt like our influences had really changed.

TCR: You guys really toured like crazy for Make Up The Breakdown. Two years is a long time to be out in support of a record.

SB: It really is, especially if you don't have a huge back catalog to pull from.

TCR: What did you do with your time off?

SB: There really hasn't been much time off, not really. We started writing songs pretty quickly after we got home. I did move to Vancouver, and my girlfriend moved out from London, so that was kind of a big deal, but other than that it's pretty much been just steady work on the new album. It's kind of shocking-and cool-that now it's actually our job to write songs. You know? Last time we made a record, all of us had multiple day jobs and stuff, and we didn't know how things would go or if anyone would ever even get to hear the record, so it's been a much, much different experience this time.

TCR: You were more prepared?

SB: Yes, definitely. Some of these songs have been recorded by us at least four times, so we've had the chance to explore different possibilities with each song. With our last record, it kind of felt like we were just hinting at what we could do with the songwriting, and people kind of looked at it as this 80's, new-wave dance thing. With the new one, I feel like each song has a more distinct feel to it, so if we do some kind of 80's new-wave thing, we're doing it on just one song and not the whole album. We had the luxury of taking more time with this one. We looked at the things we were doing well and tried to do them even better, as well as exploring other genres and sounds. The last record was catchy, this one is even catchier.

TCR: And wasn't your last record very famously recorded in six days?

SB: Yeah, and I think we spent about $8,000 for the entire thing, which, at the time, seemed like a huge amount of money to us. So we were definitely like, come on, come on, time is money. It's pretty cool that this time around we can debate things like whether or not a song could use strings...strings? It's crazy.

TCR: Itıs amazing what a difference two years can make.

SB: We're definitely grateful to be doing what we're doing, but it can be a lot of pressure. I always feel like I won't really be happy until we're making music of the same quality as the people that we idolize-like the Beatles or something-so we do lose sleep nowadays worrying about doing things right and trying to make things as perfect as we can. The drummer will call me at 5 in the morning and be like, "I've been up all night thinking about those strings...and we can't do it!" I guess we just want to do things right, so at least if the record bombs for some reason and we have to go back to our day jobs then we'll at least know we did it our own way.

TCR: Well, it's always better to bomb on your own terms than on someone else's.

SB: (laughs) Exactly. But of course we're hoping the time is right for us and people will love our record...

TCR: Well, I a lot of people loved the last one. And if a band like Modest Mouse can finally hit big, there's no reason that you guys can't. The door has certainly been opened.

SB: I know, and I think it's amazing. And maybe it's just me patting myself on the back, but I like to think that we kind of helped that along, or at least opened the door a little bit for a band like Franz Ferdinand.

TCR: On an unrelated note, when my sister came to visit me in New York for the first time, I took her to see you guys play at Coney Island. During your set we were apparently dancing too aggressively and my sister, who was 16, bumped into some guy who threatened to "beat her face in" if she bumped into him again...

SB: Oh no! Are you serious? What a creeper.

TCR: Yeah, but before I could defend her, all these badass girls jumped on the guy and basically chased him away

SB: Awesome!

TCR: And it was all because we were dancing too hard.

SB: Yeah, now that's what I like to hear...that we inspire dangerous, out of control dancing.

Hot Hot Heat's new record will be released in December by Warner Bros.