Welcome, Welcome To The Hot Club De Paris

“Throughout the whole ten days of recording I think I managed about twenty thousand press ups!” Announces Hot Club De Paris front man Paul Rafferty to a slightly bemused Gigwise. “I did closer to thirty…thousand!” Drummer Alastair jumps in, instantly outdoing in his band mate in a moment of tongue in cheek bravado. And no, before you ask, Gigwise isn’t interviewing the Moshi Moshi trio for a new role as UN Ambassadors against Worldwide obesity. It seems in fact that their world of obscure time changes and barbershop harmonies has recently made a bizarre love triangle with the world of Physical Education. The recording they talk of is their recent residency at Liverpool’s Elevator studios where with the help of producer Tim Speed they put down the material for their debut long player due this Autumn. Its called ‘Drop It Till It Pops’ and you dear reader are going to love it!

To get to this point however has taken two years of hard work, little or no money and if they are to be believed a constant and impending fear of doom. It started with a chance meeting between Paul (Who had previously been in cult Liverpool favourites Victor FME) and guitarist Matthew Smith at, of all places, Chester Racecourse. “We were both temping selling Pimms and lemonade to fake posh people and I over heard Matthew talking about The Misfits,” says Paul. A budding relationship was then formed over a resulting game of “record top trumps” (Apparently trying to out do each other with albums from their respective collections). The pair  soon began writing music together, eventually being joined by Alistair and the rest as they say is history!

Having played their first gig in April 2004, somehow at the time labelled “pretentious” by ourselves (That wayward writer has now been banished from our realm! Ed.), it hasn’t exactly been the ready made and pre-baked but stale in three months rise to prominence of many of their current batch of contemporaries. “I think it's been a slow build up because of the fact that everyone we’ve dealt with so far has absolutely no money,” explains Paul. “But we haven’t exactly got much to compare it to,” chips in Alistair. They don’t believe either that they are suited to a sudden explosion of interest Paul advances, adding: “It was never going to happen like that with us. The music that we’re playing is far too obscure in its influences despite being quite poppy.” However, it does separate them from the seemingly endless throng of new guitar bands on the horizon. “There’s not that many bands out there though doing the time signature stuff and what we do lyrically,” believes Paul adding jokingly that there making pretty “out there” stuff.

So for the uninitiated what makes up the distinctive Hot Club sound? Well first up there’s the aforementioned experimentation with obscure time signatures. “That comes from our love of New York and Chicago experimental rock music,” explains Paul. “Bands like Owls, Don Caballero and The Minutemen. It was always a bit challenging too, it’s always something we try and do when we write music together. We just try to make it as interesting as we can.” Then there’s the now much loved barbershop harmonies which perforate the bands live shows with sardonic wit and irreverence. “It started for a bit of fun really,” says Alistair while Paul tells us, “Me and Matthew already had a Hot Club song that was a barbershop, close harmony sort of thing before we’d even played together. Then we just started to incorporate it into the rest of the songs and everyone started to compare us to the Futureheads.” Gigwise laughs gingerly not knowing whether this would be a touchy subject or not.