BLAST FROM THE PAST

Ed Power finds out how bands such as HotWax and Bleach Lab fell for and are now reinventing quiet-loud indie rock

- Ed Power

Courtney Love's voice vaulted rasping and raw from the speakers and, for an instant, Tallulah Sim-Savage forgot she was breathing. "My mind was blown that a woman was singing that sort of music," says Sim-Savage, frontwoman of up-and-coming indie band HotWax.

The singer and guitarist was just 11 when her mother introduced her to Love's group, Hole, and their angst-packed 1994 album, Live Through This. Released in the shadow of the suicide of Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, the record was a pile-driving mix of trauma and rage. That blend of quiet and loud had a lifechanging effect on Sim-Savage, growing up in Hastings, East Sussex, and, seven years later, as she and her bandmates prepare to release their effervescent, punchy debut EP, A Thousand Times, she remains devoted to the 1990s indie aesthetic.

A Thousand Times is a zinging calling card from a trio just out of school their GCSEs were interrupted by Covid - and going places in a hurry. It also marks HotWax as part of a wider movement of Gen Zers who have fallen hard for that classic early 1990s indie template of detonating hooks and whispered verses - a formula pioneered, from the late 1980s onwards, by underdogs such as Pixies and then turned into a commercial steamroller in the following decade by Nirvana.

It is an ever-expanding club. Alongside HotWax, there are American artists such as Soccer Mommy, Beach Bunny and Snail Mail and, with her new LP, Blondshell's Sabrina Teitelbaum, who also name-checks Courtney Love as an influence.