Hot Lava

Photo: Ellie Bolton

Hot Lava’s songs are buoyant affairs, with quick tempos that can seem rushed, daft titles (“O Retorno Da Lovefoxxx,” “Apple+Option+Fire”), and lyrics detailing such somber matters as beach-bum mummies and vegan dragons with spinach stuck in their teeth. On the Web, the band can be found at hotlavaownsyou.com; its visual sensibility has room for plenty of hot pink. So what, exactly, makes this Richmond, Virginia, quartet sound so melancholic? For one, there’s the voice of frontwoman Allison Apperson, who injects loneliness and apathy into some unexpected lyrics—say, “These stinkin’ mummies are one smelly hassle.” And for all the pep of the band’s short debut album, Lavalogy (Bar None), its most effective song is “Iggy,” a dejected ballad about a lost dog, boyfriend or Stooge.

Lavalogy is awash in keyboards and samples, but the electronics never drive the action so much as add background color to old-fashioned guitar-pop songs. This impression becomes more pronounced at shows, where the group is a sloppy blur of noisy guitars and under-miked vocals. In other words, Hot Lava, though birthed in 2006, is a quintessential ’90s indie-rock band, with all of that era’s charms and blemishes. Onstage, this includes a tinge of the under-confidence that ran rampant in that era, yet these are four musicians who should hold their heads high. In good spirits or bad, their melodies uniformly sparkle, the stuff not of mopes but of regional kings.

Download Lavalogy now.