Hot Hot Heat Comes To Chop Suey 9/21

Seattle Theatre Group (STG) presents Hot Hot Heat, with special guest Hey Rosetta!, on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 9:00pm at Chop Suey.

If Future Breeds, the latest studio release from Hot Hot Heat, is proof of anything, it's that sometimes it takes a while to see things clearly. It's taken a decade of tours, albums, line-up changes and label switches-all rewarded with building commercial and critical success-for Hot Hot Heat to fine-tune its vision. But with Future Breeds, all that toil has coalesced into the band's most thrilling effort to date, one that coincidentally brings it full circle.

On Future Breeds, Hot Hot Heat returns to its roots both metaphorically and literally with a hot-wired and proud party album throbbing with spontaneity and creativity. When the band began writing Future Breeds, front man Steve Bays, along with band mates Paul Hawley and Luke Paquin, sought to recapture the energy and sheer love for the art form that drove the late-nineties Vancouver punk scene from which the band emerged.

The follow-up to 2007's Happiness Ltd., Future Breeds was the first HHH album cut in the band's own studio, Tugboat Place, which occupies a suite in one of Vancouver, British Columbia's oldest buildings, a marble-laden tower replete with a haunted floor. It was there over the past two years where Bays slipped into the role of producer/engineer/mad scientist, experimenting with amps and microphone placements, alternative sounds and vintage gear; he even roped in passersby and local buskers to add a little cello here, a beer- and pot-fueled sax solo there.

While some songs were treated like an experimental art project and pieced together over many months, some songs were cut in minutes, intentionally committing to the first or second take. If some artists can lose the plot in their own studios-with too much time in the control room-on Future Breeds, Bays, along with co-writers Paul Hawley (drums) and Luke Paquin (guitar) sought to get out of their own way, and make sure that they didn't kill the vibe with overdubs and over-thinking. It's what helps make the album so rambunctious, loud and, well, fun.

And that's where the energy of Future Breeds originates-it's a document of a band with a new freedom, carefully shutting itself off from outside influences and emphasizing vibe over perfection. Case in point: the spirited "Goddess on the Prairie," on which the band recorded live off the floor and Bays' voice nearly cracks, in immediate, in-the-moment passion. Coincidentally, it marks a first for Hot Hot Heat: "It's the first positive love song I've ever written," says the newly engaged Bays. "The last album was super bitter, and this one comes from being in a good head space, and surrounding myself only with fun, creative people who get me."

Bays turns Future Breeds into a poetic observation of the Vancouver neighborhood in which the album was recorded. The title track, for example, tells the modest but twisted tale of a disintegrating co-dependent relationship between a young girl and a seasoned veteran of the drug and prostitution culture of the notorious East Vancouver neighborhood. "Implosionatic" documents the day on which one man spent hours threatening to jump from a roof of a building just outside their studio window. However, Bays insists, "musically this is still just meant to be a heavy party record..."

"Future Breeds," he continues, "is a result of us craving more twists and turns, but also having more tools and less restrictions. It had to be a freak show and a barrage of ideas that weren't over-thought to the point of being stripped away or streamlined. Sometimes the best moments are the ones that are redundant, pointless or meaningless because they can also symbolize freedom, youth and rebellion."

Tickets: $13.00 advance, $15.00 day of show, not including applicable fees. Tickets are on sale Wednesday, June 30th at noon at all Ticketweb locations, charge by phone (866) 468-7623, Chop Suey box office, or online at TicketWeb.com. For more information, please visit STGPresents.org.