Boisterous Brit-styled pop band Hot Hot Heat has an acoustic EP in the can, featuring versions of five songs from its new album, "Elevator" -- "Jingle Jangle," "You Owe Me An IOU," "Pickin' It Up," "Goodnight Goodnight," and "Middle Of Nowhere."
"They're all just totally different vibes. It sounds like old Johnny Cash and stuff," says frontman Steve Bays of the songs recorded in Vancouver, where the four-piece is now based. "It's just two acoustic guitars, vocals and harmonies, but it's not watered-down versions of the album. It almost like completely separate songs. It's really really fun and cool."
Bays says right now he doesn't know when or if the versions will be made available, either packaged as an EP or released separately.
"I think that will probably be U.K. b-sides or something. I wish people were more into singles here because it's an excuse for bands to go in a different direction. You can write a really dark song or you can write an acoustic song. For us, we just looked at all our favourite bands and what they did on their second big album and there are some rules that, if you're smart, you'll stick to. You won't stray too far.
"I think we are slowly evolving and changing and moving in different directions, whereas because it's our third record, but second record that people know, we didn't want to change too too much, but we still wanted to establish the fact that we were branching out," Bays explains.
Before settling on the 14 songs that comprise the track listing for the Dave Sardy-produced "Elevator," Hot Hot Heat -- Bays, drummer Paul Hawley, bassist Dustin Hawthorne, and then-guitarist Dante DeCaro (replaced post recording by Luke Paquin) -- recorded 25 songs that it later deemed too dark or different from HHH's 2002 breakthrough, "Make Up The Break Down," and subsequently abandoned them.
"Three of the songs are coming out on a college EP that goes out to college stations, I think," says Bays, "but one's definitely on our first U.K. single, which is coming out soon and people can get on import. And I'm sure you can download it."
The single is "Goodnight Goodnight," (the same as in Canada/U.S.), but the commercial single in the U.K. (due May 16) is backed with the non-album track "When We Were Kids," which the singer says is "a totally different style for us." He describes it as "very Victoria-sounding sound," referencing the chilled-out British Columbia capital on which he was raised, as opposed to the Victorian era. "No, it's not white powdered face," he laughs. "'When We Were Kids' is really cool and now I kind of wish it had made it to the album, but it was just too different for us."
Another song, "Eyes Ears Mouth," has what Bays calls a Modest Mouse feel, "which, to me, is like a Pacific Northwest (sound)," he says. "There was more of a sound going on in the Olympia/ Seattle/Portland scene that we were kind of a part of. (The lyric is) about leaving Victoria because while we were making the record, I moved away (to Vancouver) and I don't think I'll ever move back now. It's a weird emotional thing to move away from your hometown physically and emotionally."
The other track HHH will salvage from those sessions is "Wait A Second," a lyric Bays is reluctant to discuss. He calls it "touchy," his "most intense song," and "almost too personal." When pressed, he explains, "It's kind of a different lyrical style for me in that it's about a specific night in Paris, the last night we played Paris. It was just a crazy night, and every single lyric is a story. It's an exact story."
"I actually have video footage of us arm wrestling over it the last day of preproduction, whether or not we're going to put it on the album and Dante lost, so it didn't make it on the album, but I love that song."
The band is presently on a U.K./European tour, which will be immediately followed by a U.S. stint which starts May 20 at New York's Webster Hall, and runs through to June 13 at the Avalon in Los Angeles.
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