Hot Club De Paris (Posted Date: 16 Nov 2008, 20:56)

Hot Club De Paris / Frictane

15.11.08 Gebäude 9, Köln

If you look at a list of bands from Liverpool you find a lot of brit pop bands like The Wombats, Lightning Seeds or Echo & The Bunnymen. Hot Club De Paris are also from Merseyside but they are different. Their pop tunes are heavily influenced by Minutemen / fIREHOSE and that makes them sound so unique.
Frictane are from Cologne and don't have such a distinctive sound but their high speed brit pop is very entertaining nonetheless.
Hot Club De Paris released Live At Dead Lake, the follow up to Drop It 'Til It Pops, in June already but this seems to have gone unnoticed over here as only about 50 people showed up at the Gebäude 9 on a Saturday evening which were fewer than at last year's show at the tiny Tsunami club.
When the band entered the stage bass player Paul spotted my ALL hoodie and started to sing some words from She's My Ex. If I hadn't loved them before this would have been the moment to fall for them. They then started to play their hyperactive tunes for about an hour doing songs from both albums including the Minutemen cover The Anchor and my faves from their debut, Shipwreck and Sometimesitsbetternottostickbitsofeachotherineachotherforeachother. In between their songs they made fun of each other sang Happy Birthday to their merch man and guitarist Matthew impressed the crowd with his nearly fluent German.
So it was a highly entertaining evening with a far too small audience for such a great band.