Available on: Moshi Moshi EP
Hot Club records are always the same without being formulaic. Simple pop lyrics are warped into new complexity by Paul Rafferty; “now the rain was drenched in pity” and “when stars recall spots on those teenagers’ faces” both good examples of this, from ‘Free the Pterodactyl Three’. The lyrics are usually simultaneously poignant and funny. The guitars weave into a gentle, arrhythmic tapestry. Previously, Hot Club guitar was detailed but minimal, consisting of doodling lines intersecting across verses and choruses. But on this record, The Rise and Inevitable Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band the sound is fuller, trawling around the lower registers. On the title track in particular they form this weird, almost symphonic guitar sound. I don’t mean symphonic guitars in the way that Rhapsody bafflingly use them, although we do get a dual guitar solo on opening track ‘I’m Not in Love and Neither are You.’ Though that solo’s really more part of the lyrics than the music.
‘The White Town Express’ is Hot Club’s most conventional pop song yet, in that it features chords and has the rhythm of the last dance at a school disco. A lot of this EP is about people not wanting to listen; bands splitting up member by member until you’re left with a one-man band, being carefully told not to wake the children, or having to sneak in quietly to avoid waking someone’s “stupid housemates” on the last, hushed track ‘Three Albums in and Still No Ballad’. It’s an EP about being quiet, amongst other things, yet is the Hot Club release which owes more to traditional rock music than any of their previous work. The twangs and trills of early Hot Club are still there, but buttressed by this new, big sound, to match Hot Club’s growing ambition.
James Hampson