The Hot Lies @ The GovernorHindmarsh, Adelaide (14/09/07)

Wed 19th Sep, 2007 in Gig Reviews

Heralding from Adelaide and currently touring to promote their debut full length album, null Ringing in the Sane, null The Hot Lies have been steadily growing in popularity and are now set to become a nationwide commercial success. The group has managed to gain exposure through many channels, including considerable play on Triple J and Nova and a successful My Space campaign. However, to this reviewer the immense popularity of the band is hard to understand after having now seen them perform live. Not helped by an all-round pitiful performance by the opening acts, null Mere Theory and null The Open Season, the wonderful atmosphere in the Governor Hindmarsh before, during and after the band’s performance was I believe, worthy of something much more than the bands playing had to offer.

The Governor Hindmarsh was filled with under age – œemos’ all dressed in immaculately manicured costumes that they believe represent a punk sensibility. Although, for all their disillusionment they managed to create a wonderful atmosphere that any band would love to play in front of. When the Hot Lies took to the stage the crowd was in wonderful voice and the Hot Lies could do no wrong. The band play a brand of music that can easily be classified as pop-hardcore-punk, much in the vain of popular American acts such as null Sum 41 and null Fall Out Boy and personally I find that brand of music incredibly tiresome and painfully offensive to the pathos and ethos of – œpunk’. However, having said that you have to give credit where credit is due. The band are very comfortable on stage, know how to please their adoring fans, are a very tight musical unit and based on Friday night’s performance and their popularity on Adelaide’s airwaves, the youth of today cannot get enough of them.

If the band ever wants to be taken seriously by the wider musical public and not just 17 year-olds who consume anything which sounds like their warped interpretation of – œpunk music’, they must improve and mature their songwriting. Exempting maybe two or three tracks, the band’s songs all follow the same structure, with the same sound and supplemented with the same clichéd lyrics. The Hot Lies are already big and due to the contemporaneous sound of their music they can only get bigger but they must find a stronger sense of originality within their live performance and harness the potential of their showmanship into something more than just a popular sound and image.