news
Sound Advice: Under The Streetlight by HotKid
Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.
We know what you’re thinking: the guitar/drum garage rock duo shtick is old hat and every act to employ it after the White Stripes is redundant. Well, shit, you’re probably right. But when a couple scalawags like HotKid release an EP as big, dumb, and beer-swiggingly fun as Under The Streetlight (available now via Zunior), who fucking cares?
The Cambridge, ON outfit’s latest four-song offering uncloaks newly-minted drummer Rob Butcher, who adds some welcome bite to frontwoman Shiloh Harrison’s noticeably more unhinged singing, snarling, and strumming. Opening track “Fake It” (streaming to the right) flirts with Death From Above 1979–esque fuzz-punk—all overdriven guitars, cymbal-heavy thrash drumming, and distorted wails—while the summer haze of “Dizzy” falls somewhere between an early ’90s Smashing Pumpkins slow-burner and Sleater-Kinney in one of their pastoral moods. Compared to previous EPs, Harrison dials down the guitar wankery, sticking to straight-ahead rhythm parts and focusing more on her vocals, which run the gamut from Emily Haines–ish twee (as on dance-rock romp “Yours & Mine”) to Corin Tucker–like ferocity to Cindy Wilson–esque whimsical quirk (as on the closing banger “Down”). What these tunes lack in complicated fretwork they make up for in raw, intense emotiveness.
The absence of blooze riffery on Under The Streetlight actually helps set HotKid apart from the Jacks and Megs of the world. If this EP is any indication, their long-spinner should be an infectious grrrl rock juggernaut, easy on the frills and big on the balls.