The Hot Lies
Strike the matches, if you're restless, be reckless, be reckless, bet it all on a bolt coming out of the blue…
Strike the matches, if you're restless, be reckless, be reckless, bet it all on a bolt coming out of the blue......taken from 'For The Restless'
The most thrilling Australian album of 2007 is not what you expected. It's an assured, hook-laden, memorable bolt out of the blue - and when The Hot Lies strike a match, restless rockers across the nation will be lining up to get reckless with them.
The debut album from The Hot Lies, Ringing In The Sane may be nothing you expected, but it's certainly everything you hoped. Produced by Phil McKellar (Silverchair, Grinspoon, Kisschasy) Ringing In The Sane journeys from the fires of Tokyo to bile-filled internet messageboards, from intense punk to '80s-flavoured art rock, from the jerking rhythms of Can't Stand the Heat to the contagious drama of first single Emergency! Emergency!
Born in the Adelaide hardcore scene in 2004, but raised - like all good Aussie bands - on the highways between gigs, The Hot Lies have toured with every big name in punk rock, from Millencolin to My Chemical Romance, and they'll add Good Charlotte and Sum 41 to that list before the year is out. They've played Taste of Chaos alongside The Used, Big Day Out alongside The White Stripes, Live N Local alongside The Veronicas.
Their first release, the 2004 EP Streets Become Hallways, was picked up by JJJ. Their follow up EP, 2005's Heart Attacks and Callous Acts, spawned the hits Promise Me and Tell Me Goodnight, and saw Rolling Stone declare the band one to watch. As screamo, post-punk, whatever you want to call it, has seeped into the suburbs, no Australian act has pushed it further than The Hot Lies -10,000 of those converts own a copy of Heart Attacks and Callous Acts.
Like all worthwhile journeys, the road to Ringing In The Sane was not without its bumps. A couple of exploding guitarists had the band marking time, until lead guitarist Luke Szabo finally completed the line-up in early 2007, making the move from Melbourne and his previous band The Scissor File.
The turmoil ultimately fed into the album's title - Ringing In The Sane. "It's about those times when you think you're mentally falling apart, yet somehow it all comes together," says singer Pete Wood. "We'd worked so hard and we really believed in the songs. The Heart Attacks EP connected with more people than we thought it ever would, so it would have been a cop out to let the band fall apart. It just made everyone more determined."
It fed into the songs on the album, too. "That was the biggest thing happening in my life - whether the band was falling apart or growing strong," Wood says. "There's this running theme through the whole thing, little tales of the Adelaide underground and certain times in the band. 'Strike the matches' (from For the Restless) could be the album's catchcry - it's about all the amazing things that go on behind the scenes with bands in the city, in any city."
Guitarist Luke's last minute arrival points to another running The Hot Lies theme - things are better if they come in the 11th hour. Take Running Low, a song destined to soundtrack the summer of 2007/08 - "There must be something in the water, we've been a ticking clock all summer..." Wood sings. It's Ringing In The Sane's emotive showstopper, and it will have teenagers dreaming of the last kiss of summer, and the older crowd shedding a tear of regret. But The Hot Lies see it differently.
"Every time it gets to the line: 'Counting the seconds down, the 11th hour...' I just picture all of us freaking out in the studio, trying to track one last song on a laptop," Wood laughs. "But even when it was getting to the 11th hour, I wasn't stressing because I knew when this band puts their mind to it they can make it happen. I was copping it in the studio on the last night - it was four in the morning and Jared was like, 'You've done it again, you've left everything 'til the last minute, and somehow it worked out.' That's just how it works for us."
Ringing In The Sane also marks a meeting of Oz rock's "the now" and "the next" - Eskimo Joe contribute to two songs on the album. The Perth get-together was a "let's try something and see what happens" kind of songwriting session, says Wood, and it resulted in Tokyo - all coiled-up rock intensity and a can't-get-it-out-of-your-head chorus – and Under Your Skin - deeply personal, and as indelible as the tattoos it so vividly describes.
"We weren't scared to change the music after working with the Eskimo Joe guys," Wood says. "To rip the guts out of a song, turn things upside down. When we came back from Perth, there was a new energy in our songwriting." When they joined McKellar in Sydney to record the album, The Hot Lies began steering a new course. While many songs progressed through three or four different versions before finding their true identity, one thing was certain -there was no chance of Ringing In The Sane being just another screamo record.
"It never felt like it needed to go down that path," Wood says. "Songwriting is a massive hing for us -people can fall in love with pieces of the music, but we wanted people to all in love with the entire song. It's real easy if you're writing one of those records to go 'What's the song lacking? It needs one of those bits'. But if you want someone to fall in love with the songs, you can't resort to that, it's got to be a journey. And that's what this album turned out to be."
Ringing In The Sane - geddit? You will.
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