by Ed Biggs

Back in 2003, while the music world was still feeling the reverberations of the Strokes and Stripes reigniting popular interest in all things guitar, came what should have been one of the epochal indie hits of the decade. ‘Bandages’, a giddy, intoxicating whirlwind of angular guitars and new-wave keyboard riffing by Canadian bright young things Hot Hot Heat, would surely have become a huge Top Ten hit for the group if it weren’t for a spurious ban from Radio 1 because of sensitivities about the Iraq war. The title, apparently… Anyway, it effectively doomed HHH to a career operating under the radar, despite a fantastic debut album Make Up The Breakdown registering as a lost gem of the early noughties. Now down on two of their founding members (Dante DeCaro and Dustin Hawthorne), the four-piece has struggled on manfully ever since, occasionally releasing strongly melodic, mainly enjoyable and fundamentally solid indie-pop records over the last 13 years.

Now, disheartened at their diminishing returns, Hot Hot Heat decided to call it a day with this fifth and final self-titled album. While only Steve Bays and Paul Hawley remain from their glory days, it’s a reasonably consistent and enjoyable restatement of the group’s musical principles they’ve held dear for nearly a decade and a half – just like all their other albums. Right from the opener and lead single ‘Kid Who Stays In The Picture’, with its strutting beat a cross-pollination of new-wave and disco, Hot Hot Heat is infectious indie maximalism. Album highlights come in the shape of the mid-pace Strokes-influenced affair ‘Magnitude’, the propulsive piano-driven ‘Pulling Levers’ and the surprisingly moody farewell number ‘The Memory’s Here’, more spacious than almost anything else in HHH’s catalogue. Elsewhere, there’s plenty of indie-rock savoir-faire on display in ‘Modern Mind’ and the optimistically-titled ‘Comeback Of The Century’, the kind of thing they’ve been reliably churning out time and time again.

Ultimately, Hot Hot Heat doesn’t do anything new but does it incredibly well, for the most part, and just like every other one of their albums since 2003, it serves as a frustrating reminder of how cool it would have been if HHH had actually developed into one of the most fondly remembered indie bands of the noughties. They deserve so much better than their status as a musical footnote, and it’s sad to see them go. (6/10)

Listen to Hot Hot Heat here via Spotify, and tell us what you think below!