Culture Cabinet

After a whirlwind few years, HotWax has arrived with their debut album, Hot Shock, out today. 

The album, which was co-produced by Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Wolf Alice) and Steph Marziano (Picture Parlour, Cassandra Jenkins), marks the debut LP release of the Hastings-based band, which comes after the successful release of a string 2023 EPs. 

HotWax is made up of the trio of Tallulah Sim-Savage, Lola Sam, and Alfie Sayers, and formed after Sim-Savage, a vocalist and guitarist, met Sam at school. 

“Me and Lola met at secondary school,” says Sim-Savage. “Not many people were into musica at all, really, and definitely not guitar music. So, we kind of found each other very quickly and started playing in bands together, and that just kind of evolved. We were always doing gigs from a young age, writing music together, all that. Then in college, we went to music college in Brighton, and we didn’t really like it, but it was something to do that was not academic. That’s where we met Alfie, who was a year above. We were looking for a drummer. We had gone through loads of drummers, and quite soon after Alfie joined, everything sort of took off. We met our manager.” 

From there, the band’s story plays out almost like a film. The kind of thing you read about in books that romanticize band life. 

“We used to work at a cafe on the beach in Hastings, a fish cafe,” Sim-Savage explains. “I was on the till and Lola was in the kitchen. Our manager, before she was our manager, would always come up and talk to me when I was on the till and be really interested in what we were doing.” 

The rest is history. After signing with a manager, the trio quickly got to work on creating their own music, and touring around the United Kingdom, as well as other parts of Europe and the United States. 

Hot Shock, a zippy sucker punch of an album that presents a somewhat nostalgic feeling pop-punk kind of vibe (à la the great punk/alt rock bands of the 90s), features original music from the band, as well as multiple songs that were via a live run through. This only underscores the thematics of the album, and unmistakably places the trio behind it at the forefront. Hot Shock is an album that demands to be heard loudly. An album that feels made to be heard live. An album that lives up to its name. 

“I think with this album, we had more control over the production of it and the way we recorded it,” Sim-Savage says. “We really wanted to get across that it’s a three piece.” 

“Yeah,” chimes in Sam, “That’s really the main core of our band. I think doing it like that [recording it live] captures the way we wrote the songs, and our kind of last couple years on the road and stuff. We wanted you to be able to imagine one of our shows.” 

“And, especially being a three piece and writing music,” continues Sim-Savage, “we have to ensure each element is really strong, like the bass line or whatever it is, is the best it could be, because there’s so much space that you can really hear everything. We wanted to get that across on the record, and also be able to play the songs live and it sound not so far from the actual record.” 

For the production of the album, the band teamed up with an all-female production team, and recorded in London’s RAK Studios, as well as in Joshua Tree (where they also collaborated with Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa).

“It was really amazing,” says Sam of the experience. “We really only had ten days to do it. So, a lot of everything got sorted in pre-production, really. All the songs and structures were ready, and we did the drums and guitar and bass all live in one room. Then we did a gig in the middle of it, which they’d never had a gig at RAK Studios before, and then we just finished them off. Everything just worked really well. Working with Steph and Catherine was amazing. Both of them have worked on albums that we love, and we had so much fun.” 

“It was super inspirational,” Sim-Savage adds. “We recorded a couple of songs in Joshua Tree with Stella from Warpaint as well. We also didn’t mean to just work with women. It just so happened they were best for the job. But, I’m really glad it ended up like that.” 

With the release of Hot Shock, and all it entails (including a tour, three album variants that correspond to each band member’s hair color, including an orange “Lola” Rough Trade exclusive), it seems that trajectory for these three can only sky rocket upwards. But, for now, the band is content with staying in the present. 

“I hope [listeners] have that exciting, exhilarating, live sweaty feeling and feel like they’re living in the moment. That’s how we felt recording it, and how we feel playing it. I just hope that we feed that energy to other people, and they feel that way, too.” 

You can stream Hot Shock below.