The freedom of the end

For their self-titled farewell Hot Little Rocket lay it all on the line

Hot Little Rocket are breaking up but don’t worry. It’s not you. It’s them.

After 11 years five albums three bass players and seemingly countless shows Calgary’s epoch-defining indie-rock post-hardcore outfit is calling it quits.

For fans who were drawn to the band’s collision of pop hooks and helter-skelter skronk it’s a sad announcement. Sure some future all-ages audience might get to watch frontman Andrew Wedderburn throttle the neck of his guitar while he spills his guts. And they might hear guitarist Aaron Smelski push the limits of his Marshall cabinet with his ever-growing pedal formation. And they could check out the fuzz-laced melodies that bassist Matt Swann channels through his instrument or the relentless metronomic precision of drummer Joel Nye. They just won’t get a chance to hear it all together anymore.

“The band has run its course” says Nye simply.

“It was something we talked about last year at this time” adds Smelski. “We were running a pretty hard course with touring and flying and showcasing. Some of us lost the spark to keep doing that. I don’t want to go down to farm-team status so I’d rather just end it.”

If there is an upside for fans it’s this: When the band plays its last show it’ll also offer up one last record. In what has become a bit of a Calgary cliché the breakup show is also a CD release. But unlike many bands whose disintegration was precipitated by the recording of an album for Hot Little Rocket the reverse is true.

“It first started as yes we’re thinking it’s time we should break up” says Nye. “Then we also realized that we had written a dozen new songs with Matt and we wanted to get them on some form of recorded medium. We didn’t know how we were going to do it — if it was just going to be for us handouts for a couple of friends — but it ended up being that we had some money left that we could put it towards a proper recording.”

With that Hot Little Rocket headed to Sundae Sound and with the help of veteran engineer Dave Alcock and producer Lorrie Matheson they set out to record every last song they had left — for better or worse. You see this band is notorious for scrapping songs when they can’t achieve consensus and with four musically diverse performers in the lineup some of their back catalogue never made it to tape. This time would be different.

“Some of my favourite moments are Aaron’s least favourite or vice versa” says Swann. “I love it because for the first few years of playing with this band if there was any kind of disagreement over anything they would scrap it. And I was like ‘Fuck you don’t have to like everything.’ And that came together at the end. I was like ‘These guys are making music instead of making faces.’”

“It’s the freedom of the end” says Smelski. “With [our last two albums] Our Work and Why We Do It and moving into How to Lose Everything especially we were really trying to write the three-minute-and-30-second pop song with all the hooks while still trying to be Hot Little Rocket.”

“After that album came out it just became a little bit constricting. Coming to the end we were able to be more free. The fact is we’re not writing to make a hit anymore. We’re just writing for ourselves.”

As a result the album blends powerhouse rock numbers with the sense of space that the band showcased on their first two releases. “Volcano” opens the album with tight adherence to Smelski’s three-minute-and-30-second rule with its repetitive chorus and soaring guitar leads but buried under the hook is some wonderfully off-putting noise. For every one of the radio-friendly “hits” there’s a song like the reverb-drenched “Cash Corner” that breathes with haunting resolution or “Weather” which devolves into a wash of sound.

“We didn’t self edit ourselves as much” says Nye. “We were allowed to be a little more free. We could go a little bit crazier than we have in the past just because we weren’t held to [the fact that we] want this to be a radio-friendly record.”

One of the most amazing aspects of the album is the balance of urgent currency with vintage influences. Hot Little Rocket have never made any attempt to hide their love of ’90s indie rock but this time out they embrace it more than ever before

“We sort of picked apart the ’90s” says Nye. As Swann points out while the band’s previous albums dug into the past each one tackled a different facet of the ’90s. In contrast this album hits those signposts on a song-by-song basis. Sonic Youth Yo La Tengo Wilco Pavement and local heroes The Long Run become obvious touchstones but every member of the band is careful to avoid the trap of retread cliché.

It’s a stunning record but its brilliance is bittersweet because while it easily stands with the band’s best albums it doesn’t change the fact that it also stands as a headstone for one of the greatest bands Calgary has ever seen.

“It’s like a happy death” says Swann. “Everything’s got to end.”

“What’s going to happen when this goes away?” asks Nye. “It is just going to be one of those lost MySpace pages that someone happens upon when they are searching for porn.”

Luckily for fans all the members have something new in the works. Smelski is shoegazing with Heat-Ray Swann has gone solo as Extra Happy Ghost Nye is at the kit with Key to the City and he plans to launch a new country band with Wedderburn.

“It’s all about world domination” says Nye. “If we split apart we can get out there.”

In that sense the band’s epitaph can best be summed up by Wedderburn’s refrain from the album’s heartbreaker “Stitch.”

“I’m going to leave you” he sings “but not anytime soon.”