Album of the Month Review: Cartwheel – Hotline TNT
Elijah Melvin ‘24
Hotline TNT’s sophomore effort Cartwheel is a triumphant statement of durability for the new wave of American shoegaze.
Will Anderson has been around for a hot minute. First as a member of Vancouver noise rock band Weed, the Wisconsin native has been trying to make it work wherever he can. Raised in the midwest indie rock scene, Hotline TNT’s backburner frontman has rich musical tradition to call on, though Hüsker Du is likely just as precious to him as My Bloody Valentine.
Writing within the indie rock idiom with shoegaze aesthetics provides for turbulent union that is sure to blow out your speakers if you let it. Almost every track on every song is redlining at any given moment, and compressed to hell and back. The guitars are practically sonic onomatopoeias, punching you up with mammoth riffs and rhythms. They’ll crush you into beautiful smithereens, and build you back up to send you soaring only a moment later with arena-rock levels of catharsis. After all, all these songs are power-pop ballads glazed over with distortion. This record recalls plenty of 90s melodic tendencies while firmly standing on its own two legs, and contains enough pop sensibility to keep your ear attentive in the swirling whirlwind of instruments.
There are surprising amounts of rhythmic variability and dexterity to be found. These are songs you can stomp, mosh, flail, and headbang to, but no matter what you choose, Cartwheel demands your physical participation. “BMX” starts with a guitar glitching out in triplets, only to be obliterated by one of the fattest riffs I’ve heard all year. On “Spot Me 100” there is a breakbeat section that fades in halfway through, a technique adopted by many modern shoegazers. Some like Full Body 2, TAGABOW, and even A Country Western have adopted the breakbeats and speedier rhythmic breakdowns as a more essential part of their sound, while others with more indie rock backgrounds like Feeble Little Horse and now Hotline TNT have chosen to indulge in small amounts. Just to make sure you know they’re paying attention.
The shoegaze genre does an usually good job of taking care and feeding into itself. Where many other categories might be fighting tooth and nail to be the defining “sound” of their class, shoegazers gladly swap ideas and pedal settings, mixing and matching all their favorite sounds until they settle into something that suits them. There are certainly still discernible starting points for many of the tones that define modern shoegaze, but much of its sustainability comes from the purposefully connective tissue within. This community-first approach makes for a uniquely intertwined collective scene.
And as with any good shoegaze mix, the vocals sit squarely behind the blaring guitars, but aren’t buried to the point of incomprehension. Anderson’s dully dulcet tones are still comfortably present and lyrically discernable. Without that, the album would be missing its main through line: laments of love lost, or more accurately, love never truly found.
Over the course of the record, Anderson documents numerous unsuccessful relationships and attempted flings. On “I Know You”, he’s “just another guy on the side”, but in “I Thought You’d Change”, “a kiss would make it real.” At the end of the day, he just doesn’t want to be left behind anymore. On “Out of Town” he pleads, “sweetheart don’t leave me in the lost and found.” All the melodies that encircle these anecdotes are softly spoken but easily grasped, repetitious but not circuitous. Each of the vocal lines has clearly done its time in the mental laundry machine until they emerged sufficiently clean and polished, but none of them feel overwrought or overthought.
Amid all the cacophony, somehow Anderson cozies up to misery without it feeling hopeless. There remains a sort of mopey adolescent drawl to the vocals, but it captures the deliciously self-deprecating nature of that time of life without feeling or indulgent or derivative.
Despite his almost middle-age, Anderson maintains a doe-eyed teenage dirtbag loneliness, maybe because those typically adolescent disappointments have been his whole life. So much of his writing, while sparse and indirect, leaves plenty of room for the listener to fill in the blanks. One could imagine Will waltzing home from an ex's house, dragging his feet with a slumped gait, humming out a new tune to himself while mourning yet another failed attempt.
The true beauty of Cartwheel is that Anderson is an everyman, a humble voice happy to be forgotten in the crowd. You don’t need to be able to picture him singing these songs when you hear them. All you need to do is feel it, and the more you crank that volume knob, the easier it is to soak it all in.
Top Tracks: Protocol, I Thought You’d Change, History Channel, BMX