Heatmiser

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• Genre: Indie/Alternative
• Hometown: Portland

About

In all of popdom, Heatmiser have no easy analogue. What other band has two lead singer-songwriters of divergent sexual orientation who in turn enjoy switching off the sexual orientation of their songs in a mercurially campy/straight performance of the polymorphous perverse? The only thing missing from the band's topsy-turvy routine is humor -- La Cage Aux Folles Heatmiser most avowedly are not. The band's post-Seattle Lo-Fi sound is consistently mournful. Neil Gust's paeans to gay life often focus on feelings of persecution and loneliness, while Elliot Smith's material inevitably comes out sounding like last-call laments and acoustic suicide notes. But if Heatmiser's feeling is usually sorrowful, the clouds over their heads sometimes part, leaving the band in thrall to lustrous episodes of Beatlesque pop.

- Chad Driscoll