Hotline TNT at the Raccoon Motel -- November 21. (photo by Wes Knoll)
Tuesday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Currently touring in support of their just-released album Cartwheel, a work that Paste magazine lauded as "an expressive and foundational shoegaze triumph," the independent rockers of Hotline TNT headline a November 21 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the group's signature sound also lauded by Pitchfork as "shoegaze spiked with hooks that bring to mind power-pop heroes Teenage Fanclub or even early Foo Fighters."
Based in New York City, Hotline TNT is the project of Minnesotan songwriter Will Anderson (also known as Flip Sandy), who was previously in the Vancouver based band Weed. Although Anderson is the sole permanent member of the band, he is joined in-studio and on-stage by a rotating group of backing musicians, among them Jack Kraus and Maria Sepulveda on guitar, Mike Ralston on drums, and Sarah Ellington on bass. Following the release of three EPs (Cool If I Crash, Fireman's Carry, and Go Around Me) from 2018 to 2019, Hotline TNT released their first full-length album Nineteen in Love through the California label Smoking Room. In 2022, the band self-released the EP When You Find Out, and the following year, Hotline TNT signed to Third Man Records and released their second full-length album Cartwheel, which was named "Best of the Week" from Paste magazine and also received "Best New Music" distinction from Pitchfork.
As noted at PitchPerfectPR.com/hotline-tnt, "With Cartwheel, Anderson made the leap, as he’s often done in love and life and music, and ended up making one of the year’s most sweeping and affirming statements. Cartwheel is an endlessly romantic testament to reaching for something that slips forever out of grasp. The byproduct of Anderson’s decades-long quest to pin down the surging sound long in his head, Hotline TNT has come to notice in the last four years through loose association with a feverish surge of shoegaze revivalism. And Hotline TNT indeed trucks in the touchstones you might expect: skywriting guitars that bathe in fluorescent hazes of distortion, blown-out drums that pound as though they’re trying to escape a concrete box, and honeyed vocals that try to rise above the chaotic mess in true-to-life mimesis.
"Anderson plays and sings nearly every note on Cartwheel himself. He recorded the bulk of these songs during two very different sessions: one with prolific art-pop-punk auteur Ian Teeple (Silicone Prairie), who pushed him to keep working on every idea, and one with bicoastal engineer Aron Kobayashi Rich (Momma), who encouraged him to get ideas down and keep moving forward. But Cartwheel itself is seamless, with notions of bedroom studio largesse and punk simplicity perfectly coiled inside Anderson’s catastrophic visions of true love."
Hotline TNT headlines their Davenport engagement on November 21 with an additional set by Sleepwalk, admission to the 7:30 p.m. concert is $15, and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
