Emo. If you've been reading our site for long enough, you should be behaviorally conditioned to recoil in fear from the word, crawl under your computer desk, and assume the grade-school tornado warning position. Nothing brings out the Pitchfork Ginsu like some earnest musical diary-reading, especially if it's from loyal sponsor Vagrant. One thing I'll grant the Vagrant crowd, though, is good sportsmanship; cheers, mates.

One problem-- and I only feel comfortable telling you this after many months of loyal service-- but yeah, I like some emo. The problem lies in the definition, I guess, since "emo" has a Supreme Court pornography kind of definition; one knows it when one sees it. Emo to me is not so much the three-chord pop riffing of the Get Up Kids or the overpassionate nobody-loves-me preciousness of new-schoolers like Dashboard Confessional, but instead the mid-90s Midwestern scene of bands with a recipe of rhythmic complexity, hardcore/post-punk sensibility co-existing uneasily with anthemic tunefulness, and a tendency to moan about the womenfolk. Hey, the wintry climate of Middle America produces a lot of sensitive dorks, your humble narrator included.

It's these emo-for-lack-of-a-better-term bands (Braid, the Promise Ring's first album, Joan of Arc, and even Rainer Maria) that I fess up to occasionally dusting off for a Saturday afternoon, and pleasingly, they seem to be maintaining some semblance of influence beyond the dumbed-down nu-emo. First there was Pretty Girls Make Graves with their Braid + A Girl! formula, and now comes Canada's Hot Hot Heat, whose sound, lyrics, and album title set off my emo alarm, but in a manner gleefully free of embarrassment.

Of course, the emo label is only one of many arbitrary genre ornaments to hang on Hot Hot Heat; one could equally focus in on their new-wave Attractions fetish for Hammond organ or their post-punk urgency and off-kilter progressions. But if the Canuck quartet resembles anyone, it's Dismemberment Plan circa Emergency & I: insistent, poppy music superbly summarizing most of the melodic states punk rock has evolved through since its invention.

So even if Make Up the Breakdown contains a lyric like "bandages on my legs and my arms from you," there's no navel-gazing to be found, unless you can stay focused on your belly button while spastically thrashing about the room. Breakdown launches with a trio of energetic flashes: "Naked in the City Again" setting the nervous tone with a cymbal groove and jagged guitar; "No, Not Now" traipsing through a series of irresistibly catchy segments; "Get In or Get Out" exploding at one point into an organ freakout during which you can almost hear the keys flying off.

By now you'll have surely noticed singer Steve Bays' voice, and therein lies the swing point of your Hot Hot Heat enjoyment. Rarely pausing for more than a breath, Bays flips violently around the range, speeding up and slowing down to match the stop/starts and time signature fuckery of his bandmates. It's the kind of performance that can either obscure your enjoyment of the entire album (as it did for my esteemed colleague Eric Carr in his review of the band's Knock Knock Knock EP), or enliven the experience as a seeming nod to crazed post-punk vocalists like David Byrne and Wire's Colin Newman. For me, it's the latter-- the voice initially seemed a major flaw atop these otherwise incredibly solid rockers, but by the fourth track I'd dropped my defenses, and now find it gives these tracks the character and caffeinated energy they deserve.

No matter your feelings on the mic work, though, you can't help but notice the musical talent at play here, be it in the unusual song structures or the unobtrusive, color-adding use of the organ behind Dante DeCaro's unpredictable chords. "Oh, Goddamnit" borrows more than messy hair from Is This It? with its tik-tak drumming and poppy bass, but Bays' enthusiasm on the hook is an improvement on the Strokes' studied ennui. "This Town" deftly refuses to allow for standard toe-tapping while remaining singalongable, and "Talk to Me, Dance with Me" features an urgent Latin shuffle that amazingly (given that we're dealing with a north-of-the-border band here) skirts awkwardness.

Make Up the Breakdown still has its weaker moments-- the overlong "In Cairo" or the awkward Long Beach reggae bridge of "Bandages" in particular-- indicating that Hot Hot Heat's peak might be in the gotta-wear-shades future rather than the present. Still, there's no reason Breakdown couldn't put Hot Hot Heat on the national stage-- the band's accessible enough on top of their inventiveness to be a feminine facial structure or two away from superstardom. In the meantime, revel in the rare emo-inflected album that won't earn admonishment from us Pitchforkers.

-Rob Mitchum, November 11th, 2002