Die kanadische alternative Rockszene ist vielen Menschen hier ähnlich unbekannt wie die dunklen Wälder von British Columbia, der Heimat von Hot Hot Heat. Doch mit dem Album "Make Up The Breakdown" schufen die vier Jungs im Frühsommer einen mitreißenden Gegenpol zum unsäglichen Teeniepunk ihrer Landsfrau Avril Lavigne. Kaum ein Club, in dem "Bandages" oder "No, Not Now" nicht für Überfüllung auf der Tanzfläche sorgte. Kurz bevor sich die Band zu einer kreativen Erholungsphase nach Victoria verabschiedete und uns allein der anhaltenden Hitze überließ, konnten wir noch einmal mit Gitarist Dante DeCaro über die Ereignisse der letzten Monate sprechen. Diese haben offensichtlich ihre Spuren hinterlassen, wirkte der gute Mann in manchen Augenblicken doch ein wenig erschöpft. Wir wünschen schöne Ferien.
"Make Up The Breakdown" is your second release on Sub Pop, but you put out more records on different labels before. Why don't you stay with one label?
Well, the first two were on ACHE records which is an Indie-Punk-HC label from Vancouver which is quite close to Victoria where we are actually from. They are friends of ours. After a couple of releases on there a little bit bigger of a label seems like an obvious step. But first of all there was a record that came out on the German Monoton Records label which seems that noone in Germany ever really found out about. And then a compilation of all the material was released by OHEV Records from Florida that was just a little bigger. After that the next step was to get to a bigger indie label and Sub Pop was the perfect one. So the only reason why we are not still on Sub Pop is that the record was doing pretty well and they felt that it could do better on a major label. There was never any kind of falling out with us and we are still very close to them. We just took another step up and now we are on a major label.
There are also lots of "moving" references in your lyrics.
At the time it was written we were on our first ever tour. So we saw a lot of new cities. Also the town we are from is very small and a lot of people leave it because they don't think they are getting any fun there. We kind of always felt that it doesn't actually hinder what you creat. So we talked about it a lot. And we all still live in Victoria.
Have you ever been to Cairo?
No, I have never been there, but sure I want to go there to see the pyramids.
After working with Chris Walla on the last EP, your new album was produced by Jack Endino. Who came up with the idea?
We did the EP with Chris Walla. That was one of the first things he ever recorded and he was again a kind of a friend. I can see he is a really great producer and someone we enjoyed so much we actually worked with him later on and there are plans for the future as well. But at the point we did the record we never had a producer ever involved in our recordings. So the whole idea was for later something we wanted to try out. And Endino was still in Seattle and we knew about him because he did Nirvana's first album and all sorts of stuff like that. He did a record for a friend of ours, this band is called Black Hailers, just recently. So we thought it sounded really cool and we just asked people at Sub Pop if we can get him to do the record. They showed him our stuff, he came to see us and said that he loves to do it. That's about it.
Was there ever any attempt to make the songs sound a bit more like the raw Mudhoney way?
Yeah, it is not like an Endino sound on it at all. I think the reason that is because for what he is used to seems to like music that is exploding all over the place. And our music is pretty contained already. He went into it with his technique and it almost emphazises. So his own style became its complete opposite in our case.
The record company describes your influences as XTC, Led Zepplin and The Cure. Anything to add?
I don't believe that anyone could be able to say what their influences are. Because fuckin' you hear music constantly and there are a very few people who listen only to one type of music. And when I am writting songs I never go: "Hey, I want to sound like this band." I just like to play and whatever comes out comes out. It is no thinking of bands that makes it happen. We just put those bands on our website because that is what people always compared us to or said we sounded like. We feel those are pretty close and if noone ever heard of us and they want to have a general idea there must be some decent bands like XTC which I really like.
The band's logo on the inner sleeve reminds me of The Who.
I think that aesthetically that logo was like the very, very first Hot Hot Heat logo. I don't know, maybe it has been the guy from ACHE Records who first made it. I can't remember, it was not a conscious attempt to have that Mod thing of The Who or The Jam. I think that in rock history the whole Mod aesthetic is brilliant, like very similar to the kind of audience we have today. People who think they are fucking hip and exclusive. And it is Rock 'N' Roll and it is kind of stylish. So I think that it works and that is why we do it. Although we get really tired of it and try to fade it out.
Do you listen to electronic music?
No, none of us really know anything about it. I mean it is not big enough in North America, not like in Europe where a lot of people have been talking about it. We have nothing really to add.
Bands like Radio 4, The Rapture or The Faint got more attention recently. What's the secret behind this success?
It is one of these things when all those bands were around. The Faint, Radio 4 or The Rapture, these are bands that had been around for three or four years and had just been building up a fan base. I think you can work completely underground in North America, more sure than in Europe, because here everything is so much closer together, but in the United States everything is so spread out. It is all just words of mouth. The magazines are not included in everything that is going on. They can only really see what is on the surface. In North America this has been going on in the underground for quite some time and the family just get larger and larger because I think it is all good music. And then eventually when it gets to a certain point and you start seeing the shows, 300 or more people coming around, the media is like: "Oh, what's going on here?" It was basically once all that kind of thing had gotten exposure, it started to bowl in since it is refreshing and different for a lot of people. So I think it was the media that really watched on to an underground trend.
Hot Hot Heat appeared on the covers of several music publications, but also on The Nylon magazine. It's not a fetish thing, is it?
No, it is like a punk fanzine. I don't think we were on the cover, were we? It is a magazine from the West Coast that always covers a lot of these kind of bands.
What's your favourite b-side?
You don't really get singles in North America. Fuck, how about "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields" double a-side. We gonna choose "Penny Lane" to be the a-side which I think is dumb because "Strawberry Fields" is a much better song. So if "Strawberry Fields" is on the b-side then I like that one.
Carsten Scheef
Aktuelles Album:
"Make Up The Breakdown"
(Sub Pop/Warner)
web-page: http://www.hothotheat.com