“Dear Mariella, I’ve been going out with this bloke, and he’s obsessed with this other woman, who’s dead good looking. And erm, she’s also dead. Anyway, I’ve dyed my hair and I’m wearing clothes to look like her so he’ll want me more. Is this normal?
Yours faithfully…”
This is the gist of the fabulous new single, "The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful", from the HOT PUPPIES, who consistently manage to mix a sense of the macabre and film noir with Blondie-inspired disco/punk. As always, Becki Newman’s vocals are sexy and deeply melodramatic, adding to the weird sense of the operatic that is expected from this band.
“Like A Roman Candle” is a banging sugary rock number, which in its superb-ness, gives the mental image of pink teddy bears thrashing out and going mental, whereas “Under The Crooked Moon” is a creepy ballad which would fit nicely being played in a chamber of horrors. However,‘Crooked Moon’ isn’t as strong a track as the previous two, and the swirling Hammond, along with the demented use of Theremin,could potentially induce bouts of
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sea-sickness in susceptible listeners.
But again, Hot Puppies have given us some interesting and addictively catchy songs to chew over – perhaps they force the point of writing “intelligent” songs a little too much (“The Girl Who was too Beautiful” was inspired by Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”) – its a fine line between being genuinely eccentric and coming across a bit wanky. But clearly they’ve done alright so far. Keep it up we say!
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