Hot Hot Heat

Elevator (Sire)

Vancouver’s indie darlings Hot Hot Heat were en fuego with the release of their debut, 2003’s Make Up the Breakdown (Sub Pop). They were snapped up by Sire Records and didn’t utter another peep until this spring, losing guitarist Dante DeCaro along the way. The burning question: Is Hot Hot Heat still a sizzling ticket or just Not Not Neat? The answer is very nearly clear from the outset of Elevator: “Running Out of Time” is a bland opener completely bereft of the energy that saturated Make Up so deliciously. Elevator suggests the band isn’t willing to take risks now that they’ve got a big-label home. To be fair, not the entire LP is a snooze; “You Owe Me an IOU,” “Island of the Honest Man,” and “Jingle Jangle” are perfectly fun songs with solid musicianship behind them. The problem is the band has stripped their sound of the twisty inter-genre flirtations that made their debut so interesting and daring and swapped it for boring, Clear Channel-friendly pop-rock. Or maybe the problem is that Make Up was such a compelling debut that no follow-up stood a chance. Whatever the case, Elevator has rendered Hot Hot Heat as simply “meh.”

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This article appears in May 6 • 2005.

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