Sayer It Isn't So

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday March 20, 2008

By Paris Pompor

Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is more Dylan clone than Leo look-alike. by Paris Pompor.

"Happiness is limited but misery has no end." That's the opening line from Canadian four-piece Hot Hot Heat's fifth album. Yet the band's singer-keyboardist, Steve Bays, insists it's a work of optimism.

"That's why I get bothered when people say that it's a dark, pessimistic album," he says. "It's not."

Bays is from the "happiness takes effort" school. There is plenty of that effort in the album's power-pop, where tight-fisted guitars, pummelling drums and sharp keyboard lines swirl. The indie-kid melodies suggest Hot Hot Heat are trying to be anthemic but a despondent undertow betrays them.

"I envy people who have that built-in brighter side," Bays says. "I really want to be a happy person; it just takes a little more work. [The album's] about that struggle to find it."

On the cover of the band's latest album, Happiness Ltd, Bays is a dead ringer for another frequently unhappy chappie, Bob Dylan. From the cover's wharf setting down to Bays's scarf, stovepipe jeans and pointy boots, it's classic Blonde On Blonde-era Bob. The cover shot also recalls a famous photo of Dylan on his 1966 "Judas" tour.

It's all a coincidence, apparently. Has anyone else spotted the resemblance?

"Yeah, actually a few people have. Part of me is like, 'Oh, maybe that looks too much like ... Highway,'???" laments Bays, referring to Dylan's 1965 LP. Luckily, Bays is "definitely, totally" a Dylan fan.

He has also been compared to Leo Sayer, probably due to his dandelion hairdo, blowin' in the wind. Growing up, Bays and his few like-minded school friends were far more enamoured with punk than the falsetto pop of Sayer.

"We all had funny-looking clothes, blue hair and the full punk fatigues back when [we] were little kids," Bays says.

He went on to promote punk bands before meeting Hot Hot Heat co-founder Paul Hawley in 1998. At odds from the start, Hawley was part of a heavy metal group. "I really didn't like him at first because he was so cynical," Bays says of Hawley.

"I remember watching this band that I loved and he was standing behind me just talking shit on them the entire time. Every time a song stopped I could hear him tear them apart."

There was another hot issue: "I was drummer and he was a drummer." A year later, Hawley bought Bays a not-so-subtle gift: a synthesiser.

By 2000, they'd settled on roles in the band and launched Hot Hot Heat's debut "synth-punk" album.

"When we first met, we rubbed each other the wrong way," Bays says. "We clearly clashed. But I think that makes for a great relationship if you can harness it. He's one of my best friends now."

HOT HOT HEAT

March 29, 1pm, V Festival, Centennial Park, 136 100, $136.90. With Modest Mouse, April 3, 7.30pm, Big Top, Luna Park, 136 100, $75.10.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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