Hot Hot Heat Live: 29.05.2010 Berlin – Kesselhaus (Jägermeister Rockliga Finale)
If Future Breeds, the latest studio release from Hot Hot Heat, is proof of anything, it’s that sometimes it takes a while to see things clearly. It’s taken a decade of tours, albums, line-up changes and label switches—all rewarded with building commercial and critical success—for Hot Hot Heat to fine-tune its vision. But with Future Breeds, all that toil has coalesced into the band’s most thrilling effort to date, one that coincidentally brings it full circle.
On Future Breeds, Hot Hot Heat returns to its roots both metaphorically and literally with a hot-wired and proud party album throbbing with spontaneity and creativity. When the band began writing Future Breeds, front man Steve Bays, along with band mates Paul Hawley (drums) and Luke Paquin (guitar), sought to recapture the energy and sheer love for the art form that drove the late-nineties Vancouver punk scene from which the band emerged.
The follow-up to 2007’s Happiness Ltd., Future Breeds was the first HHH album cut in the band’s own studio, Tugboat Place, which occupies a suite in one of Vancouver, British Columbia’s oldest buildings, a marble-laden tower replete with a haunted floor. It was there over the past two years where Bays slipped into the role of producer/engineer/mad scientist, experimenting with amps and microphone placements, alternative sounds and vintage gear; he even roped in passersby and local buskers to add a little cello here, a beer- and pot-fueled sax solo there. “The goal was to make bizarre music with a ton of new ideas that sounded like it was from the future and unhindered by outside opinions,” says Bays. “Basically, if it sounded like something we’d done before, then it was like we were cheating. It was that sort of mentality that has been the fuel for the band. We were just like, ‘Let’s be a freak show punk rock band.’ So much of what makes a band cool are the flaws—the things that accidentally fall into place, like the tambourine that comes in three bars too early or the scream at the beginning of the song.”
And that’s where the energy of Future Breeds originates—it’s a document of a band with a new freedom, carefully shutting itself off from outside influences and emphasizing vibe over perfection. Case in point: the spirited “Goddess on the Prairie,” on which the band recorded live off the floor and Bays’ voice nearly cracks, in immediate, in-the-moment passion. Coincidentally, it marks a first for Hot Hot Heat: “It’s the first positive love song I’ve ever written,” says the newly engaged Bays. “The last album was super bitter, and this one comes from being in a good head space, and surrounding myself only with fun, creative people who get me." “A lot of my lyrics are just stolen snapshots from life yanked out of context and spun with a few words that fit the rhythm and flow of the vibe I'm going for that day,” says Bays.
“Whether or not this album is on a ‘new level’ is not up for us to decide. That's up to fans and critics and totally after the fact. Having said that though there's definitely an unspoken manhunt going on at all times... chasing the feeling you get when you stumble on to a new idea that you haven't heard before."
“Future Breeds,” he continues, “is a result of us craving more twists and turns, but also having more tools and less restrictions. It had to be a freak show and a barrage of ideas that weren't over-thought to the point of being stripped away or streamlined. Sometimes the best moments are the ones that are redundant, pointless or meaningless because they can also symbolize freedom, youth and rebellion.”
