Hot Dish

Hot Dish is the debut of Heart Bones, a collaboration between Sean Tillmann (Har Mar Superstar, Sean Na-Na) and Sabrina Ellis (A Giant Dog, Sweet Spirit), though it should quickly be noted that their other indie projects arent exactly predictive of their sound. With Ellis based in Austin and Tillmann in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the album was a long-distance endeavor that produced a quirky, carbonated version of synth pop, if one with familiar undercurrents of irreverence. Hot Dish opens with the space-age, Technicolor dance-pop of This Time Its Different. A bop made complete with a cheesy, late-arriving key change, it features both singers, also a trait of the rest of the album. Keeping things upbeat and eccentric, they rhyme chunky peanut butter and funky motherf*cker in second offering I Like Your Way, a lively indie pop tune loaded with sexual themes, skittering drums, and good feelings all around. With minor diversions into disco, post-punk, and more-pastoral pop (the horn section-backed Dont Read the Comments), they keep the groove moving until it loses some stream the last third of the album, which holds the bulk of the slower, more bittersweet tracks. That section includes a heavily Auto-Tuned couples cover of the 80s Eric Carmen hit Hungry Eyes. The duo never let go of their whimsy, however, even with lyrics like And now theyre building a wall to keep us apart/They think theyre breaking ground but theyre just breaking my heart on the closing spacecraft power ballad Beg for It, which features robot-like vocal filters alongside natural voices. In the end, Hot Dish is the odd album that sounds like it was nothing but fun to write and record, making it infectious in more ways than one. ~ Marcy Donelson