A sleazy and seductive post-punk fever dream, Johnny Hunter’s “HOT MESS” is the perfect soundtrack to unleashing our inner demons – a churning, sonically charged outpouring from life’s beautifully dramatic dark depths.
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Stream: “HOT MESS” – Johnny Hunter
Johnny Hunter are dramatic. Johnny Hunter are unapologetic. Johnny Hunter are jarring.
And Johnny Hunter are a “HOT MESS.” The post-punk band’s second song of the year is a sleazy and seductive fever dream: A churning, sonically charged outpouring from life’s beautifully dramatic dark depths. It’s the perfect soundtrack to unleashing your inner demons, and whether that means letting loose on the dance floor or strutting your stuff down some city’s street, Johnny Hunter’s unbound kinetic energy promises to facilitate that raw, cathartic release.
For the Australian band (who recently made a big, permanent move to the UK), “HOT MESS” is the future: A “potent cocktail of industrial, indie electronica and dance rock” (their words) that completely obliterates any and all boundaries.
I want you next to me
You make me want regrets
You wanna be next to me
Hot mess
I’m obsessed, I’m obsessed
With the way that you dress
Hot mess
“Following the release of our last album there was an element of internal staleness lingering. A conscious effort was made to evolve and ultimately have fun with the music we were making as everything we had done with Johnny Hunter was quite doom and gloom, and in truth we are not very serious people,” lead singer Nick Hutt tells Atwood Magazine.
He continues, “It was during this realization that we moved into a studio upstairs at The Lord Gladstone hotel. A Sydney watering hole for creatives young and old. Whenever we worked, there would be something on at the pub that could really make our night u-turn into chaos. Our studio became a halfway house for punters and close friends attending Dnb parties, live gigs, even life drawings on Tuesday.”
“You could never escape the inevitability that someone would come in, with a jug of beer and demand to listen to a demo. Naturally we started writing to suit the never-ending side quests that presented themselves to us. [Our bassist] Dakota would make these raucous, industrial drum loops that he’d test on people who entered the room and one of them was ‘Hot Mess.’”
“I remember one of the people he showed was Gerry, our drummer, and Gerry instantly vibed it, picked up the guitar, put his big muff on max and started riffing on the octaves. If there’s one thing we all have in common as a band, it’s that we all find ourselves at one point of the year just asking ourselves, ‘Why the f* am I like this?’ I suppose that’s why the concept Hot Mess really stuck. Nothing is ever easy with us, everything’s a mess, but it’s that chaotic spontaneity that makes the band work.”
Here we are
Two energies
The worst it can ever be
Let’s call it superficial
Maybe it’s problematic
Let’s call human nature
Let’s call it automatic
Let’s call it superficial
Let’s call it faux pas
Let’s call it human nature
Let’s call it fast cars
In short, “HOT MESS” is brutal, and yet it’s that brutality that makes it beautiful.
Johnny Hunter are an Atwood Magazine Editor’s Pick, they were featured as one of our Top Artist Discoveries of 2022, and their debut LP WANT was highlighted as one of the Best Albums of 2022, described in no small terms as a “cinematic post-punk masterpiece.”
Needless to say, the future is exceptionally bright for this group, and their desire to create a backdrop for human reconnection makes their music all the more alluring, irresistible, and necessary.
You’re licking your lips
Like you like my lips
You are
You’re a hot mess baby
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