The Hot Rats
Turn Ons
(Fat Possum)
School’s out.
It must be time to re-indulge those teenage fantasies. It must be time to pretend we’re Bowie again, making our own versions of his early '70s covers album
Pin Ups, dressed up like The White Stripes in top hats and minus bass, sneering and smiling with equal sincerity. It must be time to tap into that latent hidden cover band waiting for release inside every successful chart act. It must be time for The Hot Rats.
The Hot Rats are Danny and Gaz from Supergrass, and
Turn Ons is their debut album – and it’s an album full of cover versions, mainly drawn from the '70s (New Wave, punk and associated artists). This isn’t brain surgery, rocket science, or even plumbing. It’s a couple of chaps looking to have themselves a good time. And why not? Bangs alive, there’s way too much importance attached to dreary indie chart acts even at the best of times (yes, I’m looking your way Kaiser Chiefs): it’s nice to see a bit of a giggle presented as nothing more, nothing less. The Hot Rats are so genial and bloke-y, like the aural equivalent of
Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels without all the swearing and bodies.
Whether you appreciate
Turn Ons is down to whether you like the affable Mockney affectations of their parent band, and the songs that they grew up appreciating. I do, on both counts: so, for me, this album is – in the main – a rare good romp, disposable and forgettable but with neither of those adjectives used in a pejorative manner. There’s a stunning feedback-laden cover of Squeeze’s ‘Up The Junction’ (always a criminally underestimated song: its dedication to detail and bittersweet story worthy of the Nell Dull book it takes its title from): an equally rocking rendition of The Cure’s ‘Love Cats’ that wisely doesn’t bother attempt to match the pathos of either the original or Dinosaur Jr’s tumultuous version, but does feature a lot of meowing. There’s Bowie’s ‘Queen Bitch’ sounding like Bowie’s ‘Queen Bitch’: unsurprising perhaps, bearing in mind the considerable debt Supergrass and their peers (Suede, Blur, Pulp etc) owed to the Thin White Duke.
There’s Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’ – a song well-loved round these parts, and clearly The Hot Rats’ parts as well. There’s a ridiculously upbeat take on Gang Of Four’s second single ‘Damaged Goods’ that taps into a hitherto unimagined pop sensibility at the song’s heart. There’s the Beastie Boys’ ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ which we’ll draw a discreet veil across. There’s Elvis Costello’s timeless party animal ‘Pump It Up’: The Hot Rats turn in an even spunkier version than Melbourne’s Automatic did 10 years back. There’s a piano-chirpy reading of Sex Pistols’ snarling record company swansong ‘EMI’. And so on…
On the downside: there’s The Doors, Lou Reed, Roxy Music…but hell. This is a fun, fun record: play it seven times, lose it down the back of the sofa, rediscover it in a few years time, play it a couple more times stoned-out while enthusing wildly about how wonderful it was in the first place, and so on.
The one song missing is ‘Caught By The Fuzz’. I would have loved to have heard that.
Oh wait…
Everett True