Like some Orpheus descending through a turnstile underground

'Elevator' by Hot Hot Heat
2 out of 5 stars

In the world of music, it has become so much of a cliché that sophomore releases usually see bands adrift that bands like Grandaddy have used a play on the notion as album titles. Apparently though, New Wave-esque band Hot Hot Heat has done its darndest to intentionally derail any critical support it garnered after 2002's "Make Up the Breakdown." "Elevator," released last week here in the States, sees the four piece from Victoria, British Columbia mashing the up button while their lift plunges into the sub-basement.

Between their debut and the current release on Warner Bros. subsidiary Sire, Hot Hot Heat lost founding member and sole guitarist Dante DeCaro after the tracks that comprise "Elevator" were in the can, replacing him in the touring lineup with Luke Paquin.

Artistic differences, interpersonal drama or exhaustion from a stiff touring schedule aside, if your guitarist is driven away by your own new recording, it's probably not a good sign. While "Elevator" isn't technically the second album the band has produced, it was only with their previous offering that their particular brand of dance-pop garnered attention alongside indie radio neighbors like Franz Ferdinand. A diplomatic post on the band's Web site revealed that the split between DeCaro, who joined Hot Hot Heat in 2001 and was, according to the band, a major influence in focusing the noise of early efforts into something more palatable, was amiable and planned before the album's recording.

Instead of recording in raw chunks of straight studio time ("Make up the Breakdown" was recorded in six days), the band used the three years between albums and months in the studio to expand the sound that they began to pioneer on the previous album. Overall, that might have been a mistake, as "Elevator" sounds nearly as disjointed and purposeless as singer Steve Bays' copycat-of-a-male-Gwen Stefani phrasing. Essentially, the new album is driven primarily by bassist Dustin Hawthorne and the Roland-enabled variety of keyboard stylings Bays adds to his inane lyrics. Never quite able to escape the chorus-verse-chorus plague that signifies sugar-coated infective pop, Bays channels Mungo Jerry's classic "In the Summertime" on the fifth track, "You Owe Me an IOU." Managing to get past the love-or-hate vocals, listeners will find ironically alliterative lyrics that could have artistic weight given another setting. On the aforementioned track, Bays declares that "He was in the habit of taking things for granted/granted, there wasn't much for him to take." The song "Pickin' It Up" could very well be the Ramones song that never was, with a simplified three-chord punk structure that betrays some of the band's myriad influences. Proving that dance-a-billy is no place for political statements, the band has a go in commenting on what we can only assume is the war in Iraq, singing on "Soldier in a Box" that "I found a soldier in a box/A souvenir that someone lost at such a cost."

The type of "New Wave" that Hot Hot Heat is busy ripping off to sell T-shirts is hardly anything original to merit the word "new," and in a sense that is the tragedy of "Elevator." Fans of "Make up the Breakdown" might enjoy the ride, but everyone else will find these 13 tracks take them nowhere fast.