Messy Christmas, kids

Rachel Unthank's version of Farewell Regality is currently undoing me like I'm an old threadbare Christmas jumper. Sometimes the right song comes along and snaps me right into that melancholy festive groove. I feel like a snowman sadly melting in his own sentimentality, but at least I know what to buy my mother this Christmas. She's bang into all that Northumbrian stuff.

Here is a brief round up of Hot Club's 2008. It was a strange and busy year but we're pretty stoked on how it went. The start of the year is kind of hazy, but that'll teach me to blog more often and appropriately:

HOT CLUB FUCKED UP.

Unfortunately, due to an administrtive error, our first single of this year was our Christmas single from 2007. Some dick somewhere didn't make them in time, and they were thus rendered useless. Still, at only 300 vinyl copies and hand-stamped sleeves, it is our rarest 7", so why not give yours a spin and celebrate Christmas with smug rosy cheeks?

OUR FRIENDS DRESSED AS GHOSTS. BOATS AND WEED.

We spent the start of the year shooting a bunch of acoustic sessions with some friends on cold beaches, in ghostly pinewoods, nautical cafes and on the back of a rickety Southport shrimping boat. Disco Den who set it all up for us had a decent weed-leaf cap on the whole time he spent sorting shit out for us. The videos ended up on the second disc of Live at Dead Lake and on THE INTERNET:




WE LIKE B-SIDE TO BE BESIDE THE C-SIDE.

We made up some b-sides and recorded them in a church in our hometown of LIVERPOOL. We finished off bits of Live at Dead Lake that we hadn't nailed in Chicago. We recorded an acoustic EP called THE DEAD LOUNGE.

FALLING OVER AND FEIGNING PAIN.

We released the first single from Live at Dead Lake. It was called HEY! HOUSEBRICK and it was about when people throw bricks into the motorway because they hate their lives. The video on the other hand was a light hearted affair where we fell over loads and pretended it was real:



DUDE, IT'S NOT A LIVE ALBUM, IT'S A STUDIO ALBUM WITH A LIVE ALBUM'S NAME.

We managed to finally put out our second studio album 'Live at Dead Lake'. Everyone really liked it who knew about it, but it turned out someone somewhere did a bad job of telling all the people who bought our first album that the second one was out. Maybe it was our fault. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but these things happen I guess. Maybe everyone thought it was a live album and they only thought about it as long as they usually think about live albums. I suppose we're meant to think that studio albums are more worthwhile than live albums, and I suppose that's true if you discount Live at Leeds, The Way the West Was Won, Live in Muenster and Live at Wembley '86.

RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL.

We released our second single from Live at Dead Lake called MY LITTLE HAUNTING. Joe Tucker and I made a video for it. We had to steal fake tan from a shop called BOOTS and make our hands look like a LADY'S HANDS:



GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR TOWN.

We went on tour for a fucking really long time. We did two month-long tours in the UK and visited places we'd never been before, most notably THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND. We toured with Tellison, who are NICE GUYS. We toured with Sky Larkin, who are NICE GUYS. We toured with Sunset Cinema Club who are NICE GUYS. We toured with COPY HAHO who are kind of odd: Their bass player Richard was telling me today that their guitarist Mini, after soundcheck last night, asked if he could put his hamster in Richards flat as he didn't want it to sleep overnight in the car. It's still a mystery as to why Mini thought he'd bring his hamster to a gig in Aberdeen, but I'm trying to figure out the details as I type. Mini hasn't called Richard since but the hamster is in good health, spazzing around on one of those wheels that hamsters have. Anyway, we finished the second tour in the far north at ULLAPOOL, having played STORNOWAY, STIRLING, FORT WILLIAM and INVERNESS. Then we went and toured IRELAND and BELFAST before going back to GERMANY where we had some of the raddest times. Our driver got twatted by a prozzie in Hamburg and merch boy Jimmy got his kecks ragged apart by a traffic cop.

So that's what happened to us. BY THE WAY:

TOP RECORDS OF 2008:

1. Deerhunter - Microcastles
2. SSS - The Diving Line
3. Maps and Atlases - You and Me and the Mountain EP
4. No Age - Nouns
5. Parts and Labor - Recievers
6. Arthur Russel - Love is Overtaking Me
7. Horse Feathers - House With No Home
8. School of Language - Sea From Shore
9. Waited Up Til It Was Light - Johnny Foreigner
10. Avenging Force - The Avenging Force

THROW YOUR FISTS INTO THE FUTURE.

That's kind of what happened in 2008. We tour again starting in March 2009. In the meantime we're writing a new record. The working title is 'BREAK DOWN AT DEVIL'S POINT'. BRB.

Paul.x