How did Wisconsin-born Will Anderson go from making grunge-pop in Vancouver to shoegaze-adjacent rock in Brooklyn while signing with a taste-making label in Nashville?
It's been a long and winding road for the musician, one that's taken him from the DIY fringes to the cusp of success (or at least a sustainable career) with the release of Hotline TNT's second full length, Cartwheel. That's a great leap forward for a band who initially made their last album an unofficial YouTube exclusive.
At first blush, Third Man, a label far better known for housing Jack White's creative indulgences than developing new talent, might seem an odd fit for Hotline TNT. But Anderson, who is in his mid-30s, brings a bit of old-school POV that slots pretty well into the label's oeuvre, organizing the band's songs around big riffs — after all, isn't that the rock and roll way?
The rock and roll way has been outmoded for sometime now, but hat doesn't make Anderson a musical anachronism. Far from it. The songs on Cartwheel carry many shoegaze and dream pop hallmarks — swirling soundscapes, bendy-guitars — which lends a vibe-dependent aesthetic that keeps the record in line with many of its contemporaries. However, since his days in Vancouver's Weed, Anderson has also shown an innate understanding of how to make a song really pop. In this case, that means foregrounding some big-ass riffs, like the ones that announce "I Thought You'd Change" and "BMX," both easy standouts.
Where the music possesses an assertiveness that we don't get much in modern guitar rock, Anderson's lyrics are more of a collage. Sung in a drawn-out drawl with melodies that tend to follow those blow-out guitars, Anderson offers a series of snapshots, strung together to craft a picture of someone in the throes of self-flagellation over some undefined relationship.
If there's a clear predecessor to Cartwheel it's probably the music of Teenage Fanclub, particularly on the lovely final track "Stump," where chiming guitars carry Anderson's strongest melody. A little bit emo, a little bit shoegaze with a dash of hard rock thrown in; there are a lot of reference points to latch onto here, but it's to Andreson's credit (he wrote and played almost every note of the record) that no one artist looms over the whole thing.
That lack of specificity — their own bio describes the band as a "grungy pop music group of no certain allegiance or denomination" — seems to be the ultimate point. Simultaneously fresh and nostalgic, a hard rocking band that you can lose yourself in, Hotline TNT have made a record that defies time and space.
(Third Man Records)It's been a long and winding road for the musician, one that's taken him from the DIY fringes to the cusp of success (or at least a sustainable career) with the release of Hotline TNT's second full length, Cartwheel. That's a great leap forward for a band who initially made their last album an unofficial YouTube exclusive.
At first blush, Third Man, a label far better known for housing Jack White's creative indulgences than developing new talent, might seem an odd fit for Hotline TNT. But Anderson, who is in his mid-30s, brings a bit of old-school POV that slots pretty well into the label's oeuvre, organizing the band's songs around big riffs — after all, isn't that the rock and roll way?
The rock and roll way has been outmoded for sometime now, but hat doesn't make Anderson a musical anachronism. Far from it. The songs on Cartwheel carry many shoegaze and dream pop hallmarks — swirling soundscapes, bendy-guitars — which lends a vibe-dependent aesthetic that keeps the record in line with many of its contemporaries. However, since his days in Vancouver's Weed, Anderson has also shown an innate understanding of how to make a song really pop. In this case, that means foregrounding some big-ass riffs, like the ones that announce "I Thought You'd Change" and "BMX," both easy standouts.
Where the music possesses an assertiveness that we don't get much in modern guitar rock, Anderson's lyrics are more of a collage. Sung in a drawn-out drawl with melodies that tend to follow those blow-out guitars, Anderson offers a series of snapshots, strung together to craft a picture of someone in the throes of self-flagellation over some undefined relationship.
If there's a clear predecessor to Cartwheel it's probably the music of Teenage Fanclub, particularly on the lovely final track "Stump," where chiming guitars carry Anderson's strongest melody. A little bit emo, a little bit shoegaze with a dash of hard rock thrown in; there are a lot of reference points to latch onto here, but it's to Andreson's credit (he wrote and played almost every note of the record) that no one artist looms over the whole thing.
That lack of specificity — their own bio describes the band as a "grungy pop music group of no certain allegiance or denomination" — seems to be the ultimate point. Simultaneously fresh and nostalgic, a hard rocking band that you can lose yourself in, Hotline TNT have made a record that defies time and space.