Hot Hot Heat Learned To Write On The Road For New Album

If you've been picturing British Columbia's stalwart dance-punks Hot Hot Heat slaving in the studio over their upcoming third album, now would be the time to drop the illusion. "The record is totally done," singer/keyboardist Steve Bays declares. "We were dying to figure out how the chemistry [with new guitarist Luke Paquin] was going to be, so we started writing right away, as soon as we got out on the road.

"We started rehearsing for a couple hours during sound-check every day we were on tour, and we would be writing in the back of the bus late at night. We basically recorded a song a day and did 15 songs... there's something really special about it. You can just tell that we were excited to write it and we were excited to record it."

The band also seemed eager to distance themselves from the way they recorded their most recent release, last's year's Elevator. The as-yet-untitled new album was recorded in the same studio as their Make Up The Breakdown debut. And whereas the "two years of constant touring with all these weird issues," including the departure of guitarist Dante DeCaro, prompted them to turn inwards for the writing of Elevator, the Hot Hots' forthcoming record was put together under completely different circumstances.

"One song we wrote after we totalled a car in Spain and paid off the police," says Bays nonchalantly. "And there's another song that was written at 7 a.m. in, I don't know, Germany or Texas or wherever.

"It was written all over the world, so every song has a different feel to it — almost to the point where we were a bit worried that there wasn't enough consistent direction on this new record because it was so all over the place. But in the end it does feel cohesive, I think."

Still, Bays grapples with a succinct description of the album. "We've always wanted every record released to have a change in our approach," he says.

"With Elevator, we wanted it to be this obnoxious pop record. And Make Up The Breakdown we wanted to be this new wave thing. This album is more of an epic rock album — and I don't mean rock in a musical sense, but it's more something that you'd want to play live... We didn't want it to be humble and modest. We wanted it to be pretty over the top."

In the same way that the band wrote the album while on tour and recorded it immediately after touring, Bays says their upcoming shows — and even their rehearsals — will provide them with a bounty of material.

"We've rehearsed twice now, yesterday and the day before, and we've got like a song-and-a-half, maybe two, new songs already. I think we're just entering a really prolific stage. "We're lucky that we can write on the road. We weren't able to in the past, and a lot of bands can't do it, but I think we taught ourselves how. So I picture, after this album comes out in September, another one coming out not too long after that."

In the meantime, Hot Hot Heat have these Canadian dates coming up:
July 16 Buckingham, QC @ Festival D'Ete, Parc De La Francophonie
July 24 Kelowna, BC @ Kelowna Community Theatre
July 26 Edmonton, AB @ Ed Fest, Capital Ex South Grounds