Hot Hot Heat Inspired by Man's Attempted Suicide Leap on New Album

Hot Hot Heat have revealed that a man threatening to leap to his death from a building opposite their studio inspired a track on their new album, 'Future Breeds.'

Talking to Spinner, frontman Steve Bays says he saw the drama unfold right in front of his eyes -- and the scenes lead him to pen the lyrics to 'Implosionatic.'

He says, "For most of the album, I'm singing from from the perspective of other people. For 'Implosionatic.' we'd written the music in the morning, then in the nighttime, there was a guy right outside the studio window, 'cos we're high up there, he was on a ledge on the building across from us for three hours about to jump."

Bays continues, "There were police and everyone trying to talk him down and the whole place was cordoned off. So I wrote the lyrics jumping between his perspective and me empathising with him, with the concept of imploding mentally. Thankfully though, he didn't jump."

The Canadian indie rock dance-punk outfit built their own studio two years ago in a building on the Lower East Side of Vancouver, and Bays says the move has been pivotal to their musical development in other ways too.

He elaborates, "That's why we built our studio, so we could get an idea for a song, record it the same day and even make a video the same evening."

Bays insists 'Future Breeds' is still a 'party album' though, no matter how dark the lyrics at times, many of which reflect the nature of where where it was recorded.

He says, "The studio's in one of the most notorious neighbourhoods, lots of drugs, people smoking crack and shooting up, prostitutes, crime and homelessness. But we love it there.

"And it's still a party album, it's not all gloomy. There's just different sides of life."

The band's fourth studio album, 'Future Breeds,' is their first since splitting from Sire/Warners, and comes out this time on Dangerbird Records internationally and Dine Alone in Canada.

Just Bays and drummer Paul Hawley remain from the original line-up after the band re-invented itself to the extent the new record was almost released under a different name.

The rest of the line-up features guitarist Luke Paquin, who's been with the band for six years, and new bassist Louis Hearn.

Bays explains, "We started the band from scratch and after that point, it's really hard to know how you're going to be received. We just assumed everything was going to get slammed. For me, I always feel like I need to rebel against something, and sometimes, that's yourself, sometimes, it's what's expected of us."

Despite Bays fears, however, the often experimental album has garnered an overall positive critical response so far.

Bays enthuses, "I love it! It's great to read nice reviews. We've had some 'five out of fives', and we've never had reviews as good as that before."

In another act of rebellion, Bays revealed that the band doesn't intend releasing singles traditionally and has been deliberately 'leaking' tracks from the album online instead as they finish videos for each.

Despite that, 'Goddess on a Prairie' has become the most added track on Canadian radio playlists over the past couple of weeks, which Bays describes as "a pleasant surprise."

He adds, "I don't think any one song represents the whole album. We knew that there was always going to have to be a focus track, but we don't talk of 'singles' anymore. It's my way of rebelling against that way of working, you know, 'release one song, then work on that for six months' approach. To be honest, '21 @ 12' is sort of a more traditional 'single' [than 'Goddess.']"

"That's how things are moving for us."

'Future Breeds' is released on June 7 in the UK and June 8 in the US.