Skip to main content

Hot Cha Cha :: It's Hard to Be a White Boy in 1992


Sounds Like: You wandered into the flat of some hipster college kids who've stolen a black-and-white copier and have decided to revive the zine scene.


RIYL: Sleater Kinney, The Chills, Elastica, cut-and-paste with left-handed scissors.


Quick Review: Hot Cha Cha's EP, Rifle, I Knew You When You Were Just a Pistol, begins like many grrrrl rock indie punklettes begin, with big guitar, big drums, and tommy gun staccato vocals. Yet it's the direction they take the next three tracks that makes Hot Cha Cha worth watching. They sing in French. They sing in German. They're from the Midwest. Go figure. But their talent is most evident by the third song, "It's Hard to be a White Boy in 1992." Mirroring the grammatically jarring tense shift of the title, the song bounces from contemporary indie pop to meandering riffs more reminiscent of alt-rockers in the previous decade like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.


Check out the video, and don't pass up a chance to see them if they play nearby--I hear their live shows are not to be missed.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow. Hotchacha is gonna be huge. I've been trying to dig on some CSS lately, but it's not quite right--now I find this. I just listened to "J'acusse" about a million times.

How ya been, James?

Love,
Dave
Anonymous said…
I fucking love it. Great guitar licks. Thanks.

Drew

Popular posts from this blog

The Racoon Wedding :: Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth

Download The Paper Boy from The Racoon Wedding's album, Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth Sounds Like : they're gonna rip your ribcage out and find your heart RIYL : White Rabbits, Portugal. The Man, Fanfarlo, Rolling Stones ala Beggar's Banquet From the Press Release : Forming from the ashes of Vermicious Knid, and authoring songs in the basement of the all ages not-for-profit art space they own in a nook of the city’s forgotten downtown, frontman Tim Ford and company boast a sense of loyalty to their community that few other bands share. On their debut LP, Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth , issued this October via their own Ford Plant Recordings Co., the band enlisted the help of engineer Leon Taheny (of the Final Fantasy recording credit) and hammered out a record that teems with the spirit of long-forgotten roots music. It’s indebted to the history of mighty back porch music: unbridled, unedited, beautifully intense.

Flight of the Conchords Are Tha Muthaflippin'

If you go to the official Flight of the Conchords website , you will see that it was about the time they started work on their HBO special that they stopped updating. However, you will also read that they don’t mind too much. In fact, they are very quick to point to other fan sites that are doing a much better job. This self deprecating humour is part of what makes the duo so endearing. For those who have not yet seen the programme, Bret McKenzie ( formerly of Wellington dub band The Black Seeds) plays the naïve Bret, who is a vertible emotional rollercoaster when compared to the dour-faced Jermaine (Jermaine Clement. See him in Eagle vs. Shark ). Together they look for gigs and . . . well that’s pretty much it: they look for gigs. But it’s enough. Just because the show’s premise isn’t robust, doesn’t mean the show falls flat. Hell, remember Seinfeld? That was a show supposedly about ‘nothing,’ and look how well it did. FOTC is at least about one thing, so it’s got that much more ...

Daft Punk :: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Somehow winter still has her claws in the Pacific Northwest. It's almost May, and we're forecast snow this coming weekend. Snow! (I'll spare you my usual tirade about what physically impossible acts may be performed on this particular part of the country, my own little corner of hell.) In any event, we were teased by 80 degrees over the past weekend, only to be thrust back into the 50s and below (with rain!) immediately after. Needless to say, it has not been happy times. I am on day three of a nonstop Neko Case marathon, and, while it is indeed comforting, Neko tends to be a little, dare we say, dark ? Sometimes you just need to take pause and make your own sunshine, or perhaps be steered to some on YouTube , as is certainly the case here. (Even though I firmly believe that YouTube is leading to the complete downfall of Western Civilization, and exposing the ugly underbelly of the American experience, I can sometimes forgive it. Times like this.) Back story? Dunno. Two fre...