Elevator

Hot Hot Heat has scorched the college charts and warmed the hearts of critics with its most recent pair of indie albums. Now Canada's top Modern Rock outfit makes its major-label debut with Elevator, produced by Dave Sardy. With Elevator, Hot Hot Heat is on its way to the top with an album that, keeping with superstition, purposefully has no 13th track.

Hot Hot Heat hail from Victoria, B.C., a town best known for imitating the queen's England in the service of tourism. But never fear: the high teas and manicured gardens are all well and good, this band knows that bad manners are what rock is all about. Case in point, the song "Goodnight Goodnight," in which a former girlfriend learns "you're embarrassing me, you're embarrassing you...this isn't goodnight, this is goodbye." There's nothing quite so much fun as a good dis song, and the Heat keeps the fun going on their newest album, Elevator. Virtually every track on the CD is short and sweet with plenty of energetic, poppy goodness. Standouts include "Ladies and Gentleman" (another semiburn: "everybody's got the same story--we never wanted him here, he showed up anyway."), "Middle of Nowhere," "Soldier in a Box"--well, I'll stop before I list them all. --Leah Weathersby