After 17 years, five albums, numerous line up changes, Hot Hot Heat are calling it quits with their final, self-titled LP–not that they expect you to care. The Canadian group are totally fine with their spiral into obscurity, because they’ve have nothing left to say, judging from frontman and principal songwriter Steve Bays’ comments to the press in the wake of the split. “I really have no idea what it means to put out a record out in 2016,” he admitted to The Independent, surprised that anyone even bothers about Hot Hot Heat anymore, or cares about their dissolution: “It feels like we’re getting a warm reception so far, and not any kind of… ‘What are you doing here?’”
Bays’ statement is ostensibly intended as a humble shout-out to the diehards, and yet the self-deprecating jokes belie gravely low expectations and a dearth of self-confidence. It’s not the best look for a triumphant farewell address, but considering the purgatory faced by Hot Hot Heat’s former peers and touring partners, can you blame him? (Anyone heard from Louis XIV? She Wants Revenge? The Bravery?)
Still, the quartet have reason be proud, or at least not so damn hard on themselves. While the bulk of their contemporaries have more or less fallen into a temporal tar pit in recent years, Hot Hot Heat started this decade out strong with 2010’s Ryan Dahle-produced, forward-thinking Future Breeds, a decidedly safe–but nonetheless enjoyable–update to the off-kilter, post-punk-y pop showcased on 2002’s Make Up the Breakdown, the group’s strongest album. As expected for a career-concluding LP, Hot Hot Heat does away with this progressive approach: instead, they’ve offered up a thirty-minute, ten-track retrospective that reflects on the past decade-and-a-half with playful fondness–and beneath the cheery surface, tangible fatigue.
Bays framed the band’s self-titled LP as a return to Hot HotHeat’s punkish early period, shortly before the runaway success of Make Up the Breakdown garnered the group international attention. At that time, Hot Hot Heat recalled a more unwieldy XTC, and between Bays’ energetic barks and squeals and since-departed guitarist Dante Decaro’s proficiency in choppy punk riffs, “Bandages’” short reign on the rock charts offered a refreshing dose of goofy new-wave à la Devo.
Sadly, despite his claims of the contrary, this familiar old spark rarely ignites Hot Hot Heat, musically nor lyrically. Bays’ usual tics–the high-pitched yelps, the glam posturing–have all but faded away, leaving us with Julian Casablancas’ long-lost Canadian cousin, all sneered soh-ries and throated mumbles on “Modern Mind.” Similarly, guitarist Luke Paquin sounds like he's spending a lot of time with the last two Strokes LPs, swiping swatches of Albert Hammond Jr.’s Thin Lizzy-meets-Daft Punk palette for “Magnitude,” “Mayor of the City”, and “Sad Sad Situation.” (I’m not sure what’s more unsettling: the incessant déja vu, or Hot Hot Heat’s uncanny ability to make those albums sound good.)
Hot Hot Heat’s curtain call isn’t all recycling–accordingly for its position in the band’s discography, the record entails a litany of wistful reflections. “It could’ve been you/It should’ve been you,” Bays laments on the chorus to the opening track, a hand-wringing portrait dedicated to a childhood friend who never rose to his glorious potential (arguably, a narrative one could extend to the band itself); on “Pull Levers,” he repeatedly reminds the audience that it's “too little, too late.” Regardless of the group’s intention, these contrite undertones are easily the album’s most compelling trait, and its best songs tackle that ambivalence head on: the nocturnal samba “Alaskan Midnight Sun,” a nod to the band’s early flirtations with world music, as well as the aptly-titled closing shuffle “The Memory’s Here.” It makes for an oddly bittersweet closing note: Rarely does a band bid you farewell and admit it overstayed its welcome in the same breath.
