Hot Shorts
Manchester four-piece Hot Shorts want you to cast your minds back to a distant time, a more hopeful time: the London Olympics were in full swing; Frank Ocean had just released Channel Orange; you donated to take down Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. That’s right, it’s the ‘Summer of 2012’, and Hot Shorts are taking you on a trip down memory lane.
Chris Killen (vocals/guitar) says of the track: “‘Summer of 2012’ is a song about owning your ‘first real iPhone’ and also about how a smartphone can possibly be a ticket to numbness if you just stare at it all the time. It also contains a stupid Bryan Adams joke intro. The video is made out of various things we filmed (on our iPhones) while recording the album over five days at Big City Jacks with Michael Whalley.”
Originally formed in 2013, around the songwriting between guitarist Chris Killen and bassist Peet Earnshaw, Hot Shorts quickly picked up local attention, leading to two BBC 6 Music sessions for Marc Riley and support slots for Jeffrey Lewis, Trust Fund, The Lovely Eggs and Ezra Furman.
In 2016 they expanded to a four piece, with the addition of drummer Lara Williams and guitarist Joel Nicholson. The new line-up were invited by Drenge to perform as part of their Tramlines showcase event in Sheffield (Eoin from Drenge also tweeting out around the time that Hot Shorts were his “favourite band of the past 5 years”), and later that year joined the bill at the Los Campesinos! curated ‘Us vs. Them’ festival in Leeds. Shortly after this, the band released the track ‘Metaphor for (Something)’ as part of cult label Art is Hard’s postcard singles club series.
Recorded and mixed this year at Manchester’s Big City Jack’s studio, I Understand & I Wish To Continue is the band’s peppy second album which ably follows on from where the band’s excellent 2017 self-titled debut album left us. It is twenty nine minutes of cascading hook-laden pop precision from one of Manchester’s finest breakout bands of recent times. An assured and engaging affair, the record is ten tracks of 90’s tinged slacker anthems and the occasional luxury indie lament, deftly arranged and crafted by the band over the last two years.
Unsurprisingly, for a band featuring two published authors, the lyrics on this album take centre stage. Songs like ‘Lostprophets Tattoo’, ‘Don’t Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before’, and ‘I Found You on Myspace’ are keenly observed vignettes which blend knowing pop cult humour, keen social observations and the occasional dollop of self introspection. It’s a wonderful, lyrically savvy album, designed to leave the listener feeling amused, discerning and invited firmly in on the joke.
Chris says of the writing on the record, “Pretty much all of the songs are either about feeling really old and embarrassing and/or music from my past…the songs are mostly.. about being slightly too old and British to still be into 90s alt rock as much as we are, but there is also one about being afraid to go to space on there and also one about a cat”.
Fans of their previous release will not be disappointed. New listeners will find a new favourite to cling to over the months ahead.
New album I Understand and I Wish to Continue out now via Icecapades Records
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