Hot Snakes. How do I obsess over thee, let me count the ways. It is, I have to admit, the most left-field thing imaginable how much I love this band. Can’t stand Rocket From The Crypt. Barely tolerate Drive By Jehu. And then, somehow, back in 2001 I heard Automatic Midnight, the first album by Hot Snakes, a band warmly regarded as being mostly the group that RFTC and Drive By Jehu members formed.

Automatic Midnight, I didn’t have much use for at first. It was too damn noisy, ripped, shredded apart. But then something happened, on the third or fourth listen: I realized it was the best damn rock album I’d heard in years, the sort of thing that made me remember that at one time, I really loved some good punk rock, that garage rock didn’t blow, and that not every band with weird tunings and crazy intertwining guitar interplay had to be totally fucking boring.

People don’t get my obsession with the band, and honestly, I can’t quite explain it. They will tell me ‘oh yeah, they’re cool, but Yank Crime is where it’s at.’ I don’t hear it. On the three Hot Snakes albums (granted, Audit in Progress doesn’t hold up quite as well as the rest,) and last year’s live album, the band is everything I wanted to hear, at the right place, right time, right impact, right sound and guitar tone (this is a band that realized you can rock just as hard by turning the distortion way down,) right elliptical lyrics and shit-tight design. They were a well-honed machine, the ultra-clean punk band predicted by Talking Heads’ “Electric Guitar,” the intertwined garage band Unwound could have been with a little more gumption (not to detract from one of the best bands of the ’90s, mind you.) I’ve heard some great bands in the past seven years, and I’m sure I’ll hear at least a couple more in the next two and a half, but for now, Hot Snakes is the one to beat.

Four downloads, one an album:

Hot Snakes - Our Work Fills The Pews”

Buy Automatic Midnight: Insound | eMusic

Hot Snakes - “Ben Gurion”
Buy Suicide Invoice: eMusic

Hot Snakes - “Kreative Kontrol”
Buy Audit in Progress: Insound | eMusic

Hot Snakes - “Plenty For All”
Buy Thunder Down Under: Insound | eMusic