The Hot Puppies and Hey Willpower

In my guise as sometime live gig reviewer for The Skinny, I was at King Tuts last night to see The Hot Puppies. What I expected from the two support acts, was your standard local bands and a packed room that then empties before the main act, when the crowd, there to see their pals, leave.

The first support, Racingreen, fitted this bill. Local act who were all right, if nothing special. The main support though was unexpected.

Hey Willpower are a dance act from San Francisco. When they started off with some choreographed dance moves I knew they’d be worth watching. Even although the singer was clearly miming through most of the songs they were highly entertaining.

I couldn’t help but feel however, that they would be more suited to an appearance at a gay club than supporting a Welsh indie-rock band. They invited the audience onto the stage to dance with them for one number and got no shortage of takers.

There was really nothing to do but enjoy them, their energy and the fact that they were obviously having a good time was just infectious. And it helped that the songs were for the most part quite good too.

Their set closer ‘Everybody Get on the Floor’ has hit single stamped all over. After they finished, folk from the crowd came up to hug them and get them to sign CDs. And no, they weren’t taking the piss.

As for The Hot Puppies, they were as good a rock band as I’ve seen this year. They have cracking songs, a great stage presence and a charismatic singer. That’s about all you need really. I’ll let you know if and when my glowing 150 word review appears in the magazine.

There are more photographs than are strictly necessary of both bands, over at my Flickr site.