Hot Hot Heat – Happiness Ltd.

I’ve never been a massive Hot Hot Heat supporter, but I would consider myself a fan. After all, Elevator was an energetic and entertaining release and they were always a band that were able to pull their sound off live. It made it so that even when it was poring rain, I still had a fun time watching them perform on stage. So despite not being a massive supporter, I was still rather excited for Happiness Ltd.; unfortunately though, Hot Hot Heat have failed to build on the success of Elevator and have given their fans a CD that will be forgotten in a week or so.

Right from the start, Happiness Ltd. stumbles as the title-track practically puts the listener to sleep. The five minute long track opens up with an interesting couplet of Happiness is limited but misery has no end/ Give us somewhere we can go instead of one more dead end but the rest of the song falls flat. It’s way too long and slow,making it so the listener almost falls asleep and is instantly doubting the CD. There’s no energy or catchiness that were rampant on Elevator, instead the song is inexplicably bland. So right away the listener is disappointed, and this is only the first track with ten left to sit though.

Luckily, bhe band picks it up slightly with Let Me In as the second track is able to bring back the new wave goodness that Hot Hot Heat were known for and you can’t help but feel as if this would’ve been the right track to open the CD with. Sadly, even if they had used this to open the album with, the rest of the CD tends to follow more in the vein of Happiness Ltd. rather than Let Me In (with Harmonicas & Tambourines being the major exception to that). All the songs follow the same lethargic pattern as the opening track making for a very long and dull release. Steve Bays’ vocals are still strong but he isn’t spitting the lyrics out at the same speed that he used to and instead seems to be holding back which doesn’t do anybody any good.

On top of that, all the songs seem very, very repetitive. Not repetitive between one another, but rather repetitive within themselves. At least the last minute of every song could easily be eliminated as they just repeat the same melody and line over and over and over again, lengthening each song to somewhere between four and five minutes. In my opinion, if you can’t think of anything new to add to the song, just end the song instead of spitting out the same lines twenty some times. Then the fact that they use the fade out effect too really adds to the cheesiness factor.

So despite this being their third album, I’ll still chock this one up as a sophomore slump. It’s not that the songs are absolutely terrible, they’re just incredibly bland and repetitive and missing that energetic vibe that characterized them in previous records; so much so that in a few weeks you won’t even remember you have it.