A Song For Friday: Hotline TNT
Will Anderson delivers on Cartwheel...plus a bonus from The Beatles
I found Hotline TNT, led by the Minnesota-bred, Brooklyn-based Will Anderson, through live videos on Jarret Wolfson’s YouTube channel and was immediately sucked in by the massed guitars, driving rhythms, and bittersweet melodies, which were well-concealed in a heart of noise. Then I got to see them live myself last week at TV Eye and was even more blown away by that combination of seismic power and roiling emotions.
Now Cartwheel, their second album, is out today and world domination can’t be far off. Anderson recorded most of the album himself, painstakingly layering guitars of differing textures to achieve a sound somewhere at the intersection of shoegaze and Glenn Branca’s electric orchestrations. The songs are well-crafted, too, with a nice variety of moods. Give a listen to I Thought You’d Change and then catch up with the whole album.
As I mentioned on my October podcast, watching the video I took at TV EYE I couldn’t help but notice how Anderson and the rest of his excellent live band were moving as one, entrained by the rhythm, which reminded me of that clip of The Beatles playing Some Other Guy at the Cavern Club. Check it out:
Thoughts on Hotline TNT?
And, speaking of The Beatles, I heard a rumor that there was a “new” song by the Liverpudlian legends. Did a deep dive on Google and found this:
Speaking seriously now, you don’t need me to recount the story of how this John Lennon demo was turned into a polished track so I’ll just offer a few thoughts on what they’re calling “the last Beatles song.” It’s a slight song by Lennon, with spare lyrics and a verse that doesn’t know if it’s a chorus and vice versa, but the melancholy melody carries the day. As for the finished track, it’s warmly layered with acoustic guitars, strings, bass, and drums all blended into a very unified sound. Some parts of the arrangement and the way Paul and Ringo approach their playing seem more of our era than when The Beatles were operating, but I’m actually fascinated by the way the historical styles seem to rub against each other in the song. The most Beatle-esque part of the song for me, aside from Lennon’s voice, was they way Paul supported Ringo’s drum fills with a nifty little riff on his Hohner. And the way everything comes home at the end, after a lift by the strings, is very satisfying and even moving.
As for Peter Jackson’s video, I found it a bit cringe the way he dropped Lennon in here, there, and everywhere, but some of the Paul/Ringo (and even George from 1995) interactions are very sweet. Jackson also sticks the landing with his final shot: that iconic bow…and fade.
Fascinating how the video sort of nixed a lot of the goodwill I saw towards the actual track. Went from a well-intentioned, technologically-assisted exercise in nostalgia to an arguably exploitative cringefest.
cant stop slamming repeat on "I Thought You'd Change," gotta be one of my songs of the year. Stoked to see them open for Wednesday in February!