Hot Rats Avoid Cheesy Covers on Debut Album

When Supergrass main man Gaz Coombes started his new outfit, the Hot Rats, he put a few self-imposed restrictions on himself for their debut album, 'Turn Ons.' For one: don't be cheesy. When you're doing an album full of classic rock covers, that's a pretty important thing to keep in mind.

"There's been a trend in the U.K. of young indie bands doing a Britney Spears song or something," he tells Spinner. "To me, that's a bit cheesy. 'Hey, let's cover something that's so unlike us and make it indie.' I'm not taking the piss out of them, but we weren't afraid of pushing it and taking it in a new direction. Eventually, they'd become our own songs."

Of the tracks they chose, fans can tell the versions are something entirely new all together. Case in point: the cover of the Beastie Boys classic, '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!).'

"I remember talking about touching on the acoustic, so I took [it] into the other room and I started playing around with chords, kinda like you were writing a song, but I had these lyrics that were already there," Coombes recalls. [Producer] Nigel [Godrich] said 'Why don't you try to do a falsetto thing in the verse?' and I thought it was like a new song. It was part of my childhood, part of growing up, that song."

The other track that Coombes says is indicative of the band's quest to make the music their own yet do something that isn't hokie was Pink Floyd's early tune, 'Bike.' "The [Syd] Barrett period was a really important time for Pink Floyd," he says. "It was a different vibe than the late Floyd, where it came all together. It was a lot more fractured and surreal. I think 'Bike' is an incredible example of the looseness of Barrett. The experimentation and charm was what it was. You can't repeat it and they had a different charm once he left."

'Turn Ons' is out now on Fat Possum Records.