Music/Album Reviews

I first saw Hot Flash Heat Wave at Hard Luck in Toronto just a couple days before my 17th birthday. It was my first small-venue show, my first time stepping foot into the place that would soon become one of my favourite spots in the city, and — perhaps most importantly — my first real mosh pit. I still remember the feeling of getting pushed up against the wall of the foot-high stage, regarding my bruised knees like trophies the day after.

It was 2018, the height of the surf-rock resurgence, and the fuzzed-out, West-coast vibe of Hot Flash Heat Wave was the coolest thing my Ontarian teenage brain could imagine. The San Francisco-based trio gained a cult following with their chill, distorted twist on beachy rock, and their consistent innovation has kept them a major player in the indie scene even as the genre-du-jour began to shift.

Despite the fact that their hit track Gutter Girl was once on every playlist I made, it’s been a while since I gave them a listen — so when I turned on their latest album, Sportswear, I did a genuine double-take, certain I must have clicked the wrong band. Their new sound is psychedelic, electronic, gothic and lightyears away from anything they were doing in 2018. This evolution shocks me and sets them apart from one-time scene contemporaries like Summer Salt and Remo Drive. While many bands of the era are still stuck in the laidback indie-emo sound that often reads as outdated now, Hot Flash Heat Wave have gone weird.

Admittedly, their electronic-psychedelic opening track, Yesterday, sounds like a Tame Impala B-side, but a fun Tame Impala B-side, nonetheless. It’s from here that the album goes in a truly unexpected direction: the tracks that follow wildly oscillate between vaporwave, ’80s goth, new wave, synth-pop and even vaguely shoegaze influences. The new-wave-y track Vampires is a standout that sounds like if New Order had a baby with, oddly enough, Foster the People?

This album is nearly impossible to put your finger on — as soon as you feel like you understand it, the next track starts and completely throws you for a loop. But this is undeniably how Hot Flash Heat Wave designed it: the title Sportswear was intended as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the ways in which the broad spectrum of aesthetics that flourished in the ’90s became commodified and watered-down for commercial mass appeal. Their influences surpass the musical, too, as they also drew inspiration from fashion and anime to craft a cohesive visual and sonic aesthetic that surpasses everything they’ve done before.

Hot Flash Heat Wave sounded completely new back when I was 16, and it’s oddly comforting that they’re still putting out surprising, innovative and unexpected work all these years later. Albums like this make the bruised knees worth it.