Hot Lava
Biography
There’s a new brand of weird pop music bubbling up around the east coast these days and Hot Lava are right in the thick of the flow. Calliope Kurtz understands. “This is pink tambourine utopia!” she enthuses at Perfect Sound Forever, waxing poetic about Hot Lava’s “digital basement bling” and “under the charm killer songwriting. …Polaroids from teen eternity.”
It’s been 3 years of countless laughs and quite a few line-up changes, Richmond, Virginia's Hot Lava, comprised of Allison Apperson, Jared Sosa, Andrew Mowe and Matt Deans, are finally ready to heat things up. Their multi-layered debut album, Lavalogy, is a unique, conceptual adventure that plays like the musical companion to a satirical and subversive graphic novel.
There is no denying the band's love-affair with 90's indie-pop or their 60's inspired sensibilities, but Hot Lava's music goes beyond celebrating the past, it gazes into the future with a wide-eye and an endearing, off-beat sense of humor. Whether lead singer Allison Apperson is romanticizing about a spinach-eating blue dragon, or wrestling with technology (Apple+Option+Fire), she and the rest of the boys are focused on smothering their catchy pop vignettes with candy-coated melodies and infectious hooks that are guaranteed to get your temperature rising.
The Lava crew started out as art school buddies, Allison was design focused, Jared and Andrew did film and Matt did illustration and design. Their background had them playing in galleries and underground warehouse parties. The local club scene was a little more problematic where it was hard to find bands that shared their sensibility. At one point Allison with other friends and Lavas started a Pretenders tribute band called the Pretend Pretenders. (check out their take on “Kid” at walrusmusicblog.com)
” When we started playing live in late 2006, we didn't really have a niche. We played with a lot of local bands, but there wasn't a lot of chemistry at times,” explains Allison “We started playing shows with out of town bands (The Videohippos, The SadCobras) a couple months later and realized that we were all pretty like minded folks. We've all networked a little now, and we’re part of a community that sort of spans up and down the East Coast. We're all friends of friends of friends and fans of each other's music The internet has sort of fueled a new weird music revolution that's happening right now.”
Bar None is proud to officially release Hot Lava’s Lavalogy. Ten great songs that are guaranteed to slowly ooze their way through your cranium. Hot stuff indeed.