The Hot Puppies are actually a nonet!
“It’s a really weird sound in here isn’t it?” says Becky Newman, lead singer of the Hot Puppies. A fairly staple comment from a band’s front woman, you might think, but in this instance she is not talking about auditorium acoustics. Instead Becky is referring to the continuous dulled rumblings, crunches and mechanical sounds emanating through the walls and from outside the nearby interior window. She and the rest of the Puppies are seated in a karaoke booth at London’s Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, waiting for food to arrive.
“Like an engine room…”
“Yes,” she agrees, “Or like an aeroplane!”
In the calm before tonight’s gig, SUPERSWEET is quizzing the band on what they’re doing currently and what they’re looking forward to in the near future.
Ben Faircloth, Hot Puppies bass player, offers a wry answer. “We really want to get back to our practice rooms and work on the new album,” he says, “but instead we keep coming to bowling alleys and libraries.”
The day before, a music scheme called ‘Get It Loud in the Library’ got Hot Puppies all the way to Lancaster.
“If they’d had a bar it would have been ok,” says drummer Bert Wood.
A similar scheme where bowling alleys are concerned? Unlike libraries, here you can experience music in the comfort of your own drink and cigarette fumes. But Luke Taylor, guitarist and songwriter, is still skeptical. “At least people were listening [at the library],” he points out. “That was nice. I guarantee you if anyone does actually come here tonight it will be like this – [he mimics someone talking on a mobile phone] Yeah, yeah, I’m in a BOWLING ALLEY! There’s a really shit band playing!”
Luke may not show it, but SUPERSWEET suspects there’s a sizeable amount of irony in all this comic humility. The Hot Puppies have certainly lived up to the first part of their name in 2006 and have received a lot of accolade in recent times – as well they know.
“Basically since January we’ve finished recording an album and done four tours,” says singer/keyboardist Beth Gibson nonchalantly. “There’s been lots of press too – stuff in NME and really good things in MOJO, which was nice and quite a surprise.”
“The Guardian too,” adds Luke. “That one was at the point where it was actually too much. I mean, you’ve got to leave a little bit of space for us to get better!”
The new album in waiting is naturally the space in mind here – and for any budding artist who hopes it gets easier after your debut, the Hot Puppies offer sobering advice. The second outing is something the band’s song-writing division is taking very seriously.
Says Luke: “Yeah, the way we’re trying to think about it is that if we never did another album again that this would be the one. Whereas, for us, [first album Under the Crooked Moon] was just like saying, “Hello,” we’re impressing upon ourselves that this one has to be a really good album, because you never know what happens in the future and you might not get another chance like this. At some point you have to say, well now I have to do something very very good.”
“Also, the first one was documenting what we’d already done throughout three years or so,” says Becky, “and now in a sense we’re starting from scratch.”
SUPERSWEET points out that these admirable but largely self-imposed pressures must be more than compensated for by having a firmer platform to fulfill their aspirations.
“Well we’ve been told we have!” says Luke. “I’ve been promised that we are going to have plenty of money and we will want for nothing, but so far…”
The rest of that sentence trails off into group laughter.
Under the Crooked Moon is full of vibrant and delineated characters (thinking here Theda Bara and Terry amongst others). SUPERSWEET learns that emphasis in the second album will be placed more on strong stories. It is also expected to explore broader-reaching themes.
“Less heartbreak, less unrequited love songs.” Luke says, “It’s probably more thought out. The first was really a collection of songs, whereas this is much more of a collective, with more structure. They sort of fit each other. There’s a reason for them being together.”
“The whole thing is about optimism and caring about what is going on in the world,” says Luke. “I think all the other songs are quite selfish in a way. They’re about things going wrong just for you. These are about being in a slightly happier frame of mind and that sometimes lends itself to actually caring more about the world in general. They’re not specifically political because that would be dreadful. I don’t think any of us particularly agonise enough about that sort of stuff for it to be heartfelt - but certainly the background interest in larger questions is there.”
There seems to be a general theme with the Hot Puppies of simultaneously keeping touch with original points of reference even as they conspicuously move away from them. The band’s name, aside from the Dorothy Parker reference, is a case in point.
“It seemed to fit at the time,” says Luke, “but there’s also the thought that as we grow older it will start to become ridiculous, you know? If we’re still going when we’re fifty and we’re still called that…”
“A bit like Sonic Youth,” notes Ben.
“The idea was to completely fit in with the characters that are in our songs,” continues Luke. “You know – fifty year old woman who used to be the small town belle, still in the dress that’s too tight and no-one has had the heart to tell her yet. That will be us – something to look forward to!”
‘Literariness’ and ‘referential’ are perhaps millstone-weighted compliments for a band, but SUPERSWEET notes depth of that kind in Luke’s lyrics that most bands don’t posses.
“Actually, that’s another thing I’m trying to move away from,” he says. “The references are always going to be there, but I don’t want them to be so blatant. I was talking to someone else whose songs I really like and we were both saying the same thing, that you can write in a style and choose a language to use – but at some point if you want to have a go at being really good you’ve got to stop doing that and just try and write completely straight, which is what I’m trying to do now.”
It was inevitable that, coming from Wales, the Hot Puppies would be associated with other Welsh bands. SUPERSWEET points out that a certain journalist (not ours) recently compared them, rather unimaginatively, to Catatonia.
“It’s quite grating,” says Becky. “Ok we met in Aberystwyth, but Beth and I aren’t even from Wales. The boys are, but that is neither here nor there. People think they have to categorise everything. We’re also called a girl band but there are more boys than girls!”
“Some bands are obvious products of where they’re from,” notes Luke. “Public Enemy is a product of New York and there’s no denying it. But if anything we’re not so much a product of Wales as a product of the countryside.”
“Maybe more a product of Aberystwyth,” adds Beth, “in the sense that it’s a small town.”
“But it could be a small town anywhere,” finishes Becky.
This takes us on a humorous digression, as living in a small town inevitably means doing crap jobs. Apart from one song this subject is not something the Hot Puppies have documented much in their music. But they certainly don’t mind talking about it. Prize for the worst job goes to…?
“I made fence posts for a fucking badger baiter,” announces Ben. “I was sat in a hut with just a load of machinery and a bunch of fucking good old boys from the mountains of Wales who tried to get me to go badger baiting with them! It was horrible. It was the worst job imaginable. I did it for about nine months and I got enormous veins on my neck that made me look like Henry Rollins!”
Presently thoughts turn back to tonight’s gig and thence to the forthcoming tour in November. “The humour [on tour] just gets diabolical,” laments Beth. “It’s not even like it gets ruder, it just gets more boring. Absolutely terrible.”
“It sinks by steps to the lowest levels you could possibly imagine,” agrees Ben. “Our competition at the moment is to see who can be the most boring member of the band. So essentially you think of something really boring and come out with it. It’s so tiresome!”
“It starts spilling over into real life,” worries Luke. “You know – at what point does art imitate life?”
“A long time ago!” laughs Ben.
SUPERSWEET wants to know who the driving force of such a group could be. This raises eyebrows.
“I think we’re all quite good at being punctual,” claims Ben. “We all turn up on time. I’m probably the most begrudging I suspect!”
“If so I’m probably second most begrudging,” says Luke wearily.
“I’m a keener!” announces Bert.
“It probably varies from day to day,” considers Luke, and then laughs. “If it comes to weaving dreams it’s probably me. If it’s changing the oil in the van it’s probably Bert. There’s no democracy!” He pauses a moment. “For the record, I did ‘that’ [signals inverted commas] when I said weaving dreams!”
Time is almost upon the Hot Puppies to prepare for going on stage. Yet the most important question of the evening remains unasked – who is the best at ten pin bowling?
“Well I’ve only bowled twice in my life so it’s not me,” says Ben. “But if I did bowl I guarantee I would be the best.”
“If you chose to do that instead of your charity work…?” questions Luke.
“Yes. My charity work and my CIA commitments.”
Words: Alderson