Hot Hot Heat changes its focus on new CD

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, June 2, 2005

Hot Hot Heat went into writing its second CD, “Elevator,” not really knowing what direction to take the songs. But singer Steve Bays said band members did have one goal.

“We knew we wanted to make a record where people were going to talk about it,” he said. “We wanted a record that would completely surprise some people and completely (upset) other people. I didn’t want to kind of sit on the fence. I feel like we did that.”

The main people who might be agitated over “Elevator” are those who wanted Hot Hot Heat to reassert its status as forerunners of the dance rock sound that has started to infiltrate modern rock radio.

Since the 2003 release of the Victoria, B.C., band’s first CD, “Make Up the Breakdown,” both Franz Ferdinand and The Killers have had major success with debut records that shared plenty of traits with the sound of “Make Up the Breakdown.”

But Bays said Hot Hot Heat decided not to let trends dictate the sound of the second CD.

“Almost every article I read about us, it says this band started the sound that the Killers and Franz Ferdinand popularized, and I think that’s great and maybe that is true to a certain extent,” he said. “But we made a point of saying these other bands are doing like this new wave disco thing. We’re going to prove to the world we’re different than that.

Bays said he and his bandmates – drummer Paul Hawley, bassist Dustin Hawthorne and guitarist Dante DeCaro (who left the band after the “Elevator” sessions and has been replaced by Luke Paquin) – didn’t immediately decide on a direction for “Elevator” when writing began in December 2003.

“When we wrote ‘Elevator,’ we really didn’t know what direction we wanted to go,” said Bays, who along with Hawley writes most of the group’s material. “We just knew that we were writing songs that intrigued us and got us excited. So what we did was we said OK, let’s not worry about what other people might be expecting, what other people want to hear, what we’ve been described as in the press. Let’s just do whatever excites us and not worry about the fact that it’s our follow-up record, let’s not worry about singles.”

This decision to stay open-minded sparked a rush of songwriting and eventually a stylistic focus emerged.

“Initially when we said the sky’s the limit for writing, a lot of the stuff was really dark,” Bays said. “It was kind of dark synth stuff that was a bit heavy and it was probably just a little more subversive than the last record. But at the same time, we were also writing these really big-sounding pop songs.

“I kind of produced them and we recorded about 25 songs and listened to them and played them for our friends and just kind of drove in the car with them and just got to know the songs. We just realized these songs that were these big, over-the-top pop songs were the ones that we all loved the most. So we decided that this record was going to be our pop record.”

The big pop hooks on the CD are irresistible, as Hot Hot Heat unreel one catchy rocking pop tune after another. Yet the songs are still plenty danceable.

“Although we might have swapped out some of like the ’80s things, and we might have swapped out some of the obvious dance beats, it’s still an extremely dancey record to play live,” Bays said. “When you go to our shows it’s like the whole audience is just like a sea of people jumping up and down. So it is music that lends itself to just letting the crowd enjoy themselves.”

Hot Hot Heat performs Saturday in Auburn.