HotChaCha

Oh no! Lock your doors and hide your children! HotChaCha is dropping their new album, Fantastic Static! Ahhhhhhhh. Sorry for all the drama, I’m just excited.

For those of you who don’t know, HotChaCha is a great band from my hometown of Cleveland! They’ve been gaining a lot of ground over the past year due to their previous release, “Worlds Hardest Working Telescope and the Violent Birth of Stars (WHWTatVBoS),” and an East Coast/Mid-West tour schedule. Their hard work as a band comes out in a fury on their second album, “Fantastic Static.” And I do mean fury! While “WHWTatVBoS,” was and still is a great album, I think “Fantastic Static,” would jump it in the alley and steal its money…if albums possessed motor-skills, had money, and some sort of thought process. That is what surprised me the most about this album; the shreddage! I expected to hear a couple more pop-type songs in the mix but, to my liking, they have done a 180 and turned up the intensity. And that is really upping the anticipation to see them live again!

Great Band. Great Album. Go Get It!
- Coolthanks.net

I stumbled upon HotChaCha when they played Child Bite's recent record release party at The Pike Room. These four girls rocked my socks off, blitzing through a high energy set as super charismatic blonde lighting rod of a front woman, Jovana Batkovic twirled in her maroon dress as she danced with the crowd. Batkovic's huffin' and puffin' vocals drive the Brat-pack tongue-in-cheek teenage punk of "It's Hard To Be a White Boy in 1992." HotChaCha pull off possibly pretentious bilingual tunes like "J'Accuse" and "Wir Tazan" with a raw, crackling force that drives these sexy Cleveland chicks. —THOMAS MATICH - Real Detroit Weekly

The relative newcomers that make up all-female outfit HotChaCha come from extremely diverse backgrounds, but now work out of Columbus, Ohio and are signed to Exit Stencil Recordings. With songs written in German, French, and English, Rifle, I Knew You When You Were Just a Pistol also boasts a classic punk sound and unconventionally appealing lyrics. This four-track EP deftly shows varied influences and does not confine itself to simply just a punk band. Both somewhat mesmerizing and confusing, HotChaCha will definitely keep the listener interested.


Lead singer Jovana Batkovic is known for her antics onstage at live shows, and with what is shown on just this brief collection of tracks, this sounds very plausible. Batkovic's unique style fits well into the scheme of the music itself, which can only be described as atypical and inventive. Drummer Lisa Paulovcin offers up some catchy beats and her drumming is a definite stand-out element on this EP. A solid track is "Heidi Was Never Good," while "It's Hard to Be a Whiteboy in 1992" is perhaps the best, which shows Mandy Aramouni's talent on the guitar as well as the lyrical diversity.


The band's obvious sense of humor and singularity are what make this EP an exciting preview for future tours and a full-length album. Rifle, I Knew You When You Were Just a Pistol is awaiting a mid-June release, and when that time rolls around, this album is worth checking out. --Claire Schuster

- Delusions of Adequacy

"HotChaCha's stage shows exude the sort of hopped-up madness usually associated with a cooler filled with energy drinks and a backpack stuffed with candy bars.It's positively intense up there."

"...a group that makes frosty indie pop sound so groovy and nostalgic."

- Claire Cygan
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from Cleveland Free Times - Scene Magazine:

"I have it on good authority that the four young ladies in Cleveland's Hot Cha Cha have been tearing up local stages with some of the best live shows around town.
I can't confirm this rumor as I've been out of action for a bit, but trust me here, unlike most of my other sources, this isn't just some loud mouth I overheard at the bar after a few Pabst, this one's legit.

Now, while I can't vouch for their performances, even if their myspace photo galleries seem to back up everything I've heard, I can vouch for their music -- a playful, powerful, and sophisticated mix of big city, post-punk and new wave that sounds far more refined than their Cleveland address might imply." - Bill Rocks Cleveland
- I Rock Cleveland:

Cleveland, Ohio, may be mired in perhaps it's worst recession ever, but when life hands Clevelanders a lemon, they tend to squeeze it into a Budweiser and call it a fancy drink. On this 4-song debut EP, this all-femme foursome squeeze late '80s 4AD into today's A.D.D. indie subset, with little regard for lilting over-reverbed soundscapes, but lots of chiming '80s chorus pedals that take dead horse post-punk riffs out of the glue factory for a spell. The German lyrics in "Heidi Was Never Good" come less from trolling for a Euro-trash 'tude, but more likely are a product of one of these gals filling a freshman requirement so she can chat with her grandma after church. Actually, singer Jovana Batkovic was born in Bosnia and lived in Germany 'til her teens. Cleveland's ethnic like that.

Supposedly Hotchacha use a garbage can to relieve themselves at their practice space, and from the sounds of it they also utilized that kind of determination to actually buy records along the way, rather than relying on Vice to tell them what post-punk is. (Though they would totally sound at home on Vice.) The vibe here is art-school dropout, the look approachable punk-gal, but the songwriting simmers out of Ohio's femme-forged, rustic alt-rock past (Heartless Bastards, Scrawl), out-classing recent grrrl-wavers like Coathangers and Boyskout for depth of emotion, and, I'm guessing, garbage cans.

By Eric Davidson CMJ - CMJ 6.16.08

You might miss the nuances in Hotchacha's music if you first hear them live, even if you're seduced by its dark, driving rapture. It's easy to be distracted by singer Jovana Batkovic, a striking platinum blonde who favors colorful, theatrical ensembles. Also a gifted actress, Batkovic takes the music to the audience literally with her confrontational performances, while guitarist Mandy Aramouni, bassist Heather Gmucs and drummer Lisa Paulovcin provide the stolid backline. But the music on the band's debut four-song EP Rifle I Knew You When You Were Just a Pistol on Cleveland-based Exit Stencil (the same label will release the band's full-length debut this year) reveals more complexity than that first live listen might suggest. "J'accuse" kicks off the disc with chiming, early-U2 guitars that underpin much of the music, while Batkovic delivers her oblique lyrics in a style reminiscent of Patti Smith: by turns conversational, declamatory and incantatory. She's sly and secretive on "Heidi Was Never Good," slipping seamlessly from English to German and back, as Aramouni's propulsively melodic guitar flows around her like a swollen springtime Swiss stream. The jabbering "It's Hard to Be a White Boy in 1992" leads into the portentous, slow-paced opening of "Wir Tanzen," whose faint droning guitar filigrees and clicking percussion accents explode into a full-bodied avalanche of sound to close the album. - Anastasia Pantsios - Cleveland Scene