Hot Little Hands @ TheCurtain, Melbourne (16/05/09)

Mon 18th May, 2009 in Gig Reviews

It’s every child’s dream: to be locked up in a toy store, left wild to run amok among the plethora of different coloured pretty things. Hot Little Hands may not be eight years old, but their latest video clip shows that they still have the infectious energy of a primary schooler doused up on a cocktail of Ribena and red cordial.

I would have given my left foot and a bag of Smarties to have been an extra in HLH’s video recording to their single Dynamite In Black and White . Filmed in a retro costume store, they change costumes about once every eight bars. The band’s statuesque lead singer Tim Harvey leads the brigade, dolling himself up in more multi-coloured material than Ashton Kutcher has Twitter followers. At one point, the entire band is wearing latex superhero costumes, giving them abs that you could grate cheese on (which is somewhat ironic as Tim is lactose intolerant). However, my personal favourite get-up was synth-master Brigitte dressed as a full length bright pink guitar.

The film clip was shot from above, giving the escapade a bit of a naughty vibe, as if they were taking the piss out of the store’s surveillance cameras. The security guards chugging back lukewarm coffee would have choked if they had seen their purposefully-dodgy 1980s coordinated choreography. That or they would have boogied along. I certainly was. And I wasn’t even wearing lycra and a wizard hat.

The gig that followed the film clip’s premiere was a little lacklustre compared to the excitement and laughter that the clip ensued. Maybe it was just because they weren’t dressed up as tropical fruits, but there wasn’t as much pizzazz as what normally emits from a buzzing HLH gig. Regardless, the crowd by this stage were more than happy to party, playing volleyball with the black and white balloons that filled The Curtain Bandroom.

They opened with the booming bass line of Hott City, a song that pumps blood through your heart just that little bit faster. Royce Akers plays his sawn off bass with the same bravado as a semi-automatic weapon. He and James Harvey are the force behind the band, tangling complicated rhythms into the angelic melodies created on Raph Hammond ’s keys.

Dynamite In Black And White is actually quite an apt explanation of HLH’s mastery between hard and soft/heaven and hell/complex and simple. The songs explode as their different binary elements clash against each other, set off fireworks for your mind.

In a haze of the highly influenced Melbourne artistry, HLH have always stood out to me as a band who is doing something a little different. The closest that you can commercially place their sound is a mix of Architecture in Helsinki’s later, more 80’s synthy vibe, the surging blues of 50’s swamp rock, and a little bit of old school disco. Plus whistling and elevator music.

Their beats are complicated, and therefore all the more entrancing. To be able to tap along to the melodic-thrash rhythm of a song like Electric Youth is no easy feat. As soon as you get it, you feel like you’ve become part of a secret clan of people clapping their own hot little hands. I highly recommend that you join the cult.