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(Aug 16, 2004)
Rating - ****
The Hot Snakes page
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Hot Snakes is a band from Southern California that's so far had two moderately successful CDs in the new millennium. They've announced that their next CD is scheduled to be in the stores soon. I want to bring this band to everyone's attention because it's about the most original and energetic music I've heard in the last several years. This is a review of Suicide Invoice, their second album. It has withstood hundreds of listenings without ever growing old or boring.
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On first or second listen, Suicide Invoice might sound like a collection of solid, hard-driving songs that remind one a bit of very early R.E.M. (e.g. "Murmur" or "Chronic Town" - before they ditched IRS Records and subsequently died a slow and agonizing artistic death.) And maybe the comparison to R.E.M. is a good one, because Hot Snakes' songs have an infectious quality that makes you want to keep going back for one more listen. But they have more energy than R.E.M. ever did -they're more reminiscent of the Rolling Stones back in their Sticky Fingers days. The energy, the driving, the optimism, the youthful exuberance - it's all there in spades, and it makes you wonder why the so-called cutting edge stations don't seem to find time for the Hot Snakes on their playlists. Never mind, it doesn't make me wonder - I already know the answer. I'm being polite.
My favorites on Suicide Invoice include "Paid in Cigarettes," "Gar Forgets His Insulin," "LAX," and "Ben Gurion." "Paid in Cigarettes" is a gentle but effective swipe at George W. Bush - gentle compared to what's come out lately - but the music is what matters. The uniqueness comes from a pattern of 8 beats followed by 7 (8/4:7/4 time signature), and the skipping of the 16th beat, like a heart palpitation, gives the song an added feeling of urgency as it rushes on to the next refrain. I always get a rush from hearing it.
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All the Hot Snakes' songs have lyrics that are at once light-hearted and deadly serious; they revel in mixed messages. Consider "Ben Gurion", with its Biblical refrain "Let my people go!" - a cry for survival of the Israeli state? - but with verses like "Build the IDF a high-rise on Courtlandt Street, and when they die, they'll leave it to me! We'll all have new lots, and planned community. And when we die, they'll name it for me!" Politically correct but having a good laugh at the hypocrisy of political correctness at the same time...or maybe it's all meant in jest. Either way, here are lyrics that make you think, which is a huge rarity in popular music today. Most just tell you what to think, or what the rest of the herd is parroting. The fun lyrics coupled with the high-wattage output of their musical talents make Hot Snakes a band to be reckoned with, and I can't wait to hear their next one, Audit In Progress, due out October 5.
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