Hotel Mira

Whether you are having major flashbacks, are living within it, or are looking forward to it, Hotel Mira’s "Jungle", is an ode to adolescence. The new single from the Vancouver – based band is a youthful, energetic anthem paying homage to the years of high school shenanigans.



"Jungle" follows in the footsteps of the band’s self-titled EP, released this past August. The song is a story about summer love and adventures, as the band sings: “come over and wreck my heart”. The single was inspired by Ladybird, the massively successful indie film this past summer:

"I remember walking out of the movie theater thinking that was such an honest, funny and heartfelt story of someone's youth that it inspired me to reflect on my own high school experience. So then I tried to encapsulate my entire adolescence into a few key phrases and moments."

Produced by Eric Ratz, known for other acts such as Arkells and Billy Talent, "Jungle" is exactly what you need to blast on your speaker this weekend. - Ear Milk

Sometimes it makes sense to change things up when things start to get a little too hot.


No one wants to show up at the venue having to run a gauntlet of enraged picketers, which explains why Calgary's Viet Cong is now known by the somewhat instantly forgettable moniker Preoccupations.

And why Dead Girlfriends rebranded itself with the 90 percent less inflammatory handle Default Genders.

And Naked Toddler name-switched to Creed (which, if you think about it, makes music that is actually 200 percent more offensive than a band name Naked Toddler).

To play devil’s advocate for a minute, one might argue that changing up one’s name midcareer is taking the chickenshit way out.

Recognizing they’d stumbled upon something that smacked of idiotic genius, Danish noise merchants Anus Presley stood proudly by its name, not to mention less-than-savoury song titles like “Killing Cats With Ball-Pens” and “Girls In Refrigerators”.

Continuing down the proudly brown poop-chute road, there’s a good reason why grindcore lifers Anal Cunt tended to find themselves playing to audiences of 12 people, none of whom seemed willing to get within 100 yards of the stage, even in broad daylight. Not only was getting on radio or back-in-the-day MTV a complete nonstarter, but any fan stupid enough to wear a band T-Shirt to school risked lifetime expulsion.


The less said about Rapeman, meanwhile, the better.

As near as we can figure, JPNSGRLS never got a particularly rough ride, despite no one in the Vancouver group appearing to be either of Japanese heritage or girls. It’s not like you had legions of Tokyo exchange students protesting outside the Biltmore, or Emperor Akihito banning the group from visiting the Imperial Palace.

Despite that, the three-piece has chosen to rebrand itself as Hotel Mira.

Its first official offering is “3 AM Lullaby”, a bass-and-drum bombed blast of impassioned indie new wave that contains one of the greatest summations of current life in Vancouver you’ll hear this year: “Because their team build condos/And our team play bongos/To show them their money owes them.”

Talk about capturing the reality that this city is rapidly becomes a place of haves and have-nots, with anyone who cares about art and music and anything other than their trust fund and real estate holdings one renoviction away from booking a one-way ticket to Montreal. Or Hope.

But stop thinking about that grim reality and escape for four minutes with Hotel Mira "3 AM Lullaby" below.

One more thing: try not to get offended over the fact that the former JPNSGRLS have seemingly named themselves after a three-star Czech hotel.

For the curious, complaints about Prague’s Hotel Mira on TripAdvisor include observations like “I would certainly not recommend this dump” and “Our shower was broken when we first checked in. We explained this to the receptionist and were told that there were no alternative rooms available and he would call someone out immediately to fix it. After waiting over half an hour, a man came to have a look at it, just to tell us he couldn’t fix it. After more persuasion he eventually gave it a go. It took at least another half an hour, but to his credit he managed to get it fixed with string and a cocktail stick.”

A damning 14 percent of the reviews on TripAdvisor rate the operation as “Terrible”, despite its having someone on staff able to fix broken showers with a cocktail stick. Hotel Mira better pray those decidedly unsatisfied customers don’t have an ongoing axe to grind, not to mention a bunch of freshly-made picket signs, when the renamed former JPNSGRLS plays the Biltmore on Wednesday (April 25). - Georgia Straight

With a new line-up, a new band name, and a new EP on the horizon, Hotel Mira vocalist and songwriter Charlie Kerr is entering a new phase in his musical evolution. It has been two and a half years since the final LP from the band formerly known as JPNSGRLS, and since that time the band has reworked their lineup with the addition of bassist Mike Noble joining Kerr and lead guitarist Colton Lauro. As the band’s previous iteration had been together since they were teenagers, this shift in course has set the stage for what this writer proposed to Kerr as a step towards “a more mature sound.”

“Yeah, I’m not crazy about that word,” Kerr says, “because [the word mature] sometimes seems like more adult contemporary, but I think that just by the nature of getting more life experience, it’s been described that way.”

While the reconstitution of any band raises questions about the motivating factors for such changes, Kerr was much more eager to dive deep into the conception and development behind Hotel Mira’s self-titled debut EP.

“It’s a lot more streamlined of how I see things,” he says, when asked about how the creative direction of this initial Hotel Mira release differs from that of his work with JPNSGRLS. Behind this streamlined process was pressure from producer Dave Schiffman (Vampire Weekend, HAIM, Brandon Flowers), who Kerr collaborated with on his songwriting.

“He pushed me really hard to find better melodies, and do things that were more melodic, and find hooks in everything” explains Kerr. The combination of this intense scrutiny and influx of new influences has set the stage for Hotel Mira to initiate their own legacy and to extend Kerr’s vision beyond his past with JPNSGRLS.

In a period of transition where it’s common for artists to get bogged down by bad blood, regrets, or nostalgia, Kerr is as optimistic and satisfied as ever with the band’s direction. “[Writing and recording the EP] was a really good artistic process of learning that you can always just improve and build.” And judging by his optimism about future projects, this is only the beginning. “The truth is, what I’m writing now completely kicks [this EP’s] ass. This is a good EP, but the full-length that’s going to come after it is going to be truly special.”

Hotel Mira’s new EP is available on August 17 on Light Organ Records. - BEATROUTE