Urban Heat

One Liner: Local group making dark synth pop for the goth kids who want more 80's

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but dark synth pop

Home: Austin!

Poster Position: 28
Weekend Two Only.  Sunday.

Thoughts:  This one just drew a huge sigh out of me.  More synth-heavy, drum machine, 80's-ish whining?  WHY?  LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

Wikipedia believes that I wanted to learn about Urban Heat Island, which is a phenomenon by which the area inside of a metropolitan area is significantly hotter than the surrounding rural area because of human activities.  This is why the center of Austin feels like Death Valley right now.  But the band's label bio says that they are a 3-piece post-punk band from Austin.  Says they fuse "dark 80's stylings with modern flourishes ... against an unrelenting gothic pulse."  That sounds so awful.  "A Simple Love Song" is awful.

Eight singles on Spotify, no EPs or albums.  One cracks the 100k stream level, the majority of the rest are lower than 50k.  "Have You Ever" is that hit with 230k streams.  I'm very confused why this would have that many streams.  This is the song that made me sigh.

Blade Runner ass synths.  His vocals sound like the TV on the Radio guy in that track.  The top comment on YouTube says that they found the song through TikTok, so I guess that is how that track has so many streams.  Also, this: "During the pandemic, Horstmann [the lead singer] sent personalized, 15-second video messages to each new social media follower that the band gained. Urban Heat’s social channels grew by 25 followers per day on average, so Horstmann spent roughly the first hour of each morning creating content for fans."  That is some commitment!

Like everyone else on the poster, this band was expecting that they were finally going to blow up in 2020, with a date at SXSW and then a string of other dates waiting behind that one.  And then it all died.  The lead singer had moved to Austin from California and played in a few other bands for years.  He says that he started down the road of synth and electronic sounds because of the birth of his daughter, and needing to do music through headphones to void waking her.  Which is cute!

The second-most streamed tune is "That Gun in Your Hand," a 2020 single with 93k streams.

Someone told me the other day how tired they are of bands who aren't really playing music, ones who just hit play on their laptop and sing along over something that was already made.  I totally agree with that.  But these guys are definitely not doing that - there is a track in the background, but there are also live synths and bass being laid into it as well.  So I don't just immediately hate this out of pocket, but I also don't much care for more of the 80's redux thing that I've heard too much recently because of this poster.  I would not plan on checking this out.