No, I don't regret it: When I endorsed Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown, I knew damn well I probably wasn't betting on a long-distance horse. After completing the review, I went on full media blackout from Hot Hot Heat, because what I knew about this band I did not like. Their pre-fame album, Scenes One Through Thirteen, was auspiciously crude; their live show, reportedly excruciating.
But despite my qualms, I couldn't stop listening to Make Up the Breakdown. Though they drew from the same new wave well as a lot of this young century's other hot prospects, Hot Hot Heat seemed to have a lot more flair and energy...and not coincidentally, a lot more Dexy's. Chock full of sugar-high keyboards, English-major alliterations, and singer Steve Bays' chutes-and-ladders voice, Make Up had an exuberance that made even its self-mutilation single a dancefloor staple for people who aren't dancefloor staples.
Ever since Make Up's release, however, Hot Hot Heat have apparently been trying their damnedest to bump Interpol off the cover of the Post-Fame Jinx Handbook. Make the hasty leap to a major label? Check. Lose a key member to creative differences during second album's recording? Check (guitarist Dante Decaro). Delay follow-up album until all or most of the buzz generated by the debut has dissipated? Check plus.
The chorus cries "backlash," but to paraphrase the golden oldie, just because we're backlashing doesn't mean we're wrong. It's unfortunate that what leaves me cold about Elevator are complaints levied in knee-jerk style to indie bands promoted to the big leagues, but that doesn't make the album's failings any less true: Hot Hot Heat sound like they're playing scared and playing it safe, and in doing so fall through the cracks between their established fans and their imagined ones.
A listener can pick up on this fear just from instrumentation alone, which-- given the departure of Decaro-- veers surprisingly away from Mays' spastic synthesizer and towards the safe confines of guitar-based rock. Elevator also muzzles what was a respectable rhythm section relative to the world of indie rock, one that believably swung through white-boy reggae ("Bandages"), white-boy Latin ("Talk to Me, Dance with Me"), and other white-boy takes on international flavors. Elevator sticks to largely straight-ahead pounding, "Shame On You" providing the sole remnant of these charmingly earnest attempts at flicking off 4/4 time.
Also abandoned back at Sub Pop is the coy wordplay, with only the half-hearted "You Owe Me an IOU" reflecting the infectiously nerdy winking of Bays' past lyrics. Instead, Elevator (itself a title that seems destined for bargain-bin files) contains a slew of public-domain-bland song names that reflect the lack of imagination within: "Ladies and Gentleman" we are "Running Out of Time" in the "Middle of Nowhere". Fittingly, most of these tracks sound groomed for immediate slotting into television montages comedy end-credits-- especially "Pickin' It Up", which sounds not unlike the theme to "Friends".
There are a few pleasant exceptions-- most notably "Island of the Honest Man". With a few abrupt tempo changes, some melodious bass and noisy guitar sheets, and a bridge that does a reasonable approximation of Brainiac, this song really is an island of Hot Hot Heat's previous promise, taking all their new-wave primary sources and just blazing through them in a caffeine furor.
It's enough to remind me that I really, honestly, do not want a band like Hot Hot Heat to fail-- I know you're thinking, "hey look, it's the good old Pitchfork build 'em up and knock 'em down routine," and the thought hurts. Backlash continues to be the primary fuel source of indie scenery, and due to its omnipotence everything gets confusing and complicated when a band really does fall down the well of follow-up album expectations. Anyway, you'll just have to trust me when I say that Elevator isn't the victim of political bias, it's just disappointing, an effort that finds Hot Hot Heat in a piss-poor dead heat with late-coming doppelgangers the Bravery...the Crisp Rice to HHH's Rice Krispies. I may be skeptical of Hot Hot Heat's youth and style to the point of allergy, but things would've been much simpler-- and I would've been a much happier listener-- if they'd just lived up to their promise, rather than fulfilled my suspicions.
