Four years after 2016's
Sweatbox Dynasty,
Tobacco returned to Ghostly International with an unexpected cover of "Hungry Eyes,"
Eric Carmen's 1987 hit featured on the multimillion-selling
Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Theoretically, a noise-pop artist taking on a soft rock radio staple would end up close to what
V/Vm did to ubiquitous tunes like "The Lady in Red" and "Just the Way You Are" around the turn of the 21st century -- that is, completely butchering them and seemingly mocking the taste of anyone who genuinely enjoys such music, as well as the entire notion of experimental, underground music itself. However,
Tobacco stated that he recorded "Hungry Eyes" simply because he genuinely loves the song, and tried to cover it as faithfully as possible, tailoring it to his vocoderized, distortion-baked sound without obscuring its buoyant melody. The track doesn't appear on subsequent full-length
Hot, Wet & Sassy, but the album clearly takes the sparkling perfection and wide-eyed, fantasy-like optimism of '80s pop as a primary inspiration, even if the songs themselves are laced with grimy distortion and filled with self-loathing lyrics. Opener "Centaur Skin" juxtaposes spooky vocals and cassette graininess with crystalline synth melodies and a driving, arpeggio-heavy electro-disco beat, resulting in a Halloween party jam for that weird kid who shows up in a hopelessly ill-conceived zombie costume and ends up dancing alone the entire night. Elsewhere, tracks like "Pit" and "Stabbed by a Knight" feature grinding bass and buzzsaw distortion sprinkled with Lite FM keyboards, envisioning
Patrick Swayze blockbusters and low-budget slasher flicks as the same thing. "Jinmenken" seems like
Tobacco's attempt to soundtrack a slow dance scene, with his masked vocals sounding only slightly less demonic than usual over twinkling keys and delicate beats. This mood is quickly upset by the mutant talkbox groove of "Babysitter," which sports a
Trent Reznor cameo and intentionally creepy lyrics, flitting between sleazy horror and odd displays of tenderness. Even when you start to think you know what direction
Tobacco is heading in with this album, he throws in further curveballs like the lonesome, tape-saturated ambient lullaby "Poisonous Horses" or the skittery, lo-fi IDM of "Mythemim." Simultaneously one of
Tobacco's most difficult and most accessible records,
Hot, Wet & Sassy might seem contradictory, but it makes a strange sort of sense in the context of his catalog, and he manages to make his grotesque vision of pop music work.