Music: Hot Hot Heat - Future Breeds (Album)

2003 single 'Bandages' was the soundtrack to many a wiggly, jiggly, rum-spilling dancefloor jig for this music fan, and the exciting album 'Make Up The Breakdown' got me addicted to Canadian punk(ish) outfit Hot Hot Heat, but for years these guys have been rolling around in their own filth, seemingly lost and making dull pop-flop-rock for almost a decade. So how does this new album fair? Is it another fart in the career bath, or a return to the promising land? Here's a cool video to give you a taster...


Going on this first single '21@12', which opens the album with some other similarly messy tunes, it's another let down, as the band waste a good chorus on an uninspiring verse and ruin EVERYTHING by stumbling into that most infuriating obvious of musical traps...the synth addition. There is a horrible fashion reared its ugly head in recent years for bands who are under pressure to be cool again to add second hand electronic instruments and circa 96 Sega sound effects to their songs in an effect to embrace the new market for 80s electronica and re-invented disco. Apart from sticking out like a sore thumb, it makes you want to print a dart board on your temples and head for the nearest boozer. What it also does is give away the band's lack of faith in their own ability and creativity as they resort to cheap gimmicks to try and reel in the trendies. But the trendies are too smart guys. They might not look it but they are, and they'll eat you alive.

After the inauspicious start there's a return to more reliably average guitar "punk" fodder of old, as presumably somebody went to town on the keyboards with an axe. There's a hint of The Strokes in 'Godess On The Prairie', and a nice dark, relaxed swagger to 'Zero Results', but it's all just very lacklustre and too little too late. The songwriting is poor, the sound is cliched, and Steve Bays sings like he's bored. Not very good.

Alas Hot Hot Heat just don't seem to possess the imagination, nor the musicianship to write good albums, and are therefore banished to the singles table, where they can enjoy the inebriated whining of Good Shoes and post-debut Futureheads.