Guitar Romantics: The Exploding Hearts

Ok, so they’re a pretty ubiquitous presence in certain strands of US punk culture. Ok, so I’ve had their sole LP ‘Guitar Romantic’ stuffed into my Mp3 player for a good while now, and have been aware of their work for far longer.

But I’d be lying if I tried to claim I haven’t been listening to The Exploding Hearts just about every damn day on the journey to or from work for the past month or so.

Every day it’s the same: struggle toward or away from the front door, rub my tired eyes, and contemplate sticking on some of the less familiar records I’ve stuck on the portable music box in order to give them more of a listen. And everyday, it’s another quick blast of “Sleeping Aides...” or “Modern Kicks” that wins out. Just a couple of tunes, I tell myself, just to get me going, then I’ll put something else on. Then I’ll proceed to listen to the whole album twice through over the course of the day. I think I could probably recite all of the lyrics by now, and whistle the solos. If I could whistle, which I can’t, thank christ. But I could probably do my best to imitate the bits of lingering feedback and ‘phew - we just finished the song’ noise at the end of each track instead. (Despite being as tight a band as you could hope to encounter whilst their songs were actually in progress, these guys sure knew the value of ploughing toward a clattering, collapsible, ad-libbed rock n’ roll ending, and I bless them for it daily.)

Anyway. ‘Guitar Romantic’. First issued by Dirtnap records in January 2003. I swear to god, it’s fucking perfect. It sounds EXACTLY like a record called “Guitar Romantic” by a band called “The Exploding Hearts” should sound. I guess the last song goes on maybe about a minute too long, but aside from that, I love every single thing about it.

The Exploding Hearts may have relied on a simple formula, one that SOMEONE was bound to make their own at some point, but man, what a formula it is, and never before or since has a band launched into it with the energy and guts and 100% hit rate that these guys did.

So, for the uninitiated, what are the ingredients we’re looking at here?

Well:

1. Classic, perfectly formed power-pop songs, tunes that could stand up to – and indeed beat the hell out of – just about anything on those Rhino Poptopia comps, topped with howled, heartfelt lyrics about girl trouble, and drugs, and schoolyard riots, and other such travails of being a punk kid, but, well, mostly girl trouble to be honest, and why not? Every one’s a winner.

Now, If there’s one problem with ‘power-pop’ as a genre, it’s that it’s often played by embittered old dudes going through the motions, but not so here, as we add;

2. Gallons of snotty, hormonal punk rock energy, coming straight from that exact same place as The Undertones, Circlejerks, Ramones, the first few Replacements records and early Green Day, where the puerile crashes headfirst into the sublime, where mad desperation hitches a ride on top of stoned suburban ennui, where every sound this band makes simultaneously cries out “FUCK YOU!” and “I LOVE YOU!” and *nothing* in-between.

3. A wild, musically accomplished band with energy levels through the roof who could, and did, absolutely play their asses off in pursuit of melodic rocking perfection.

4. A truly ridiculous ‘everything in the red’ production aesthetic, executed in the same spirit as Iggy’s remix of ‘Raw Power’. The first time I played ‘Guitar Romantic’ through my earphones, I thought there was something wrong with it – vocals all distorted and guitars clipping all over the place. Then I realised that it was simply more AWESOME than my poor equipment was accustomed to. Like, finally, someone made an album where the guitars are mixed at right level! Adam Cox’s humbucker powerchords get full spectrum dominance whilst Terry Six’s freaking *beautiful* overdriven Rickenbacker leads cleave in over the top even louder, like sickly candy from pop heaven. The vocals are cranked and compressed to shit in order to remain comprehensible over the racket, and sound all the better for it. And, miraculously, the rhythm section still comes through loud and clear too, sounding like they’re just thumping away harder than ever to stay on-message above all the distortion. THIS, I put it to you musicians and audiophile dudes, is the way a great rock n’ roll record should sound in the 21st century.

And that’s that I guess. I may be getting more reactionary in my musical tastes as I get older, but fuck it. Life as expressed through sound doesn’t get much better than this. To have been involved in the making of this music – even just making the tea (or handing out the airplane glue) – would I think justify a deeper sense of achievement than any foolhardy artistic ambitions the likes of you or I may strive day and night to fulfil.

There’s now another Exploding Hearts CD on the market too, thanks again to the folks at Dirtnap (also home to other fine power/pop/punk/garage outfits such as The Riff Randells and The Carbonas, so why not give ‘em a look), and I went out and bought it from Rough Trade the other week to help make up for my wanton freeloading of ‘Guitar Romantic’. Called ‘Shattered’, it collects the rest of the band’s recordings in a pleasantly no nonsense fashion, comprising eight non-LP songs taken from singles, session outtakes etc., and a few alternate (and on the whole less satisfactory) mixes of the album material.

Perhaps inevitably, the stuff on ‘Shattered’ isn’t quite so good as the motherlode of ‘Guitar Romantic’. The tunes occasionally veer a bit too far toward a polite power-pop-by-numbers blueprint, and lack the raucous feeling and overloaded production, but by anyone else’s standards it’s still absolutely top stuff, featuring some of the band’s best pure punk moments in the form of ‘(Making) Teenage Faces’ (“Someone shot the principal / straight through his head / school is out forever / and we’re glad that he’s dead!”), and a supremely snotty take on F.U.2’s uber-generic punk classic ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ (“it’s better than kissin’!”), whilst the self-explanatory ‘Walking Out On Love’ is a two minute blast of straight to tape perfection and ‘We Don’t Have To Worry Anymore’ is one of the group’s best compositions.

Those unfamiliar with The Exploding Hearts may have picked up on the fact that I’ve used the past tense pretty definitively a few times when discussing them in this post. That’s because on July 20th 2003, between some place and some other place on the way to a show, their tour van crashed. Pretty badly. The details don’t really matter, the point is: three quarters of the band – Adam Cox (guitar/vocals), Jeremy Gage (drums) and Matt Fitzgerald (bass) - never regained consciousness.

Pretty devastating and upsetting stuff, even five years later on the other side of the world.

But, crass though it may be to draw a conclusion like this from such an obvious tragedy, it must be said: for the world at large, a better legacy for a rock n’ roll band is hard to imagine. As one of rock’s greatest survivors ironically reminds us from time to time, rust never sleeps, and, barely out of high school, these guys had the look, the sound, the energy DOWN. About seventeen original songs immortalised on tape, every one a lightning bolt of emotion, confusion, noise and triumph, then a handful of now-legendary live shows, followed by a sudden, fiery demise. Beat that, punks.

You might be *slightly* cheered to know that surviving band member Terry Six has stayed true to the power-pop cause, and now fronts the thoroughly ‘70s-tastic Nice Boys. (And I kinda dig ‘em actually - they’ve got real great stuff going down on a pure retro bubblegum tip, but it’s all a bit too determinedly UN-PUNK for me to really love, y’know..?)

Anyway, It’s no wonder the 'Hearts have gained a hefty cult following in the states, with bands like The Busy Signals and Sleeping Aides & Razorblades taking their names from their songs (the latter have since renamed themselves The Nica-Teens – fairly sensibly, I’d venture to suggest) and certain sections of the internet are nigh-on overflowing with tribute videos, cover versions and the like. But, in the UK at least, The Exploding Hearts still none too well known, so hopefully I’m not just wasting time going over old ground with this post.

When trying to decide which two tunes from ‘Guitar Romantic’ to post for you, I might as well have pinned the song titles to the wall and thrown darts at them, such is the overall quality of the songs therein. In fact I might do that anyway, it sounds fun, but, if pushed, I think these are my two faves.

Download and play loud.

I’m A Pretender

Throwaway Style

And, thanks to the wonders of Youtube, you can also spend some quality time with one of the best rock n’ roll bands of the 21st century thus far, thanks to these two videos from one of their last shows, at the Bottom Of The Hill club in San Francisco. Fantastic stuff. I believe I achieved some sort of state of oneness with the universe somewhere between ‘I’m A Pretender’ and ‘Boulevard Trash’ in the first video.

Put ‘em on full-screen and play loud.

Part one (Modern Kicks / I’m A Pretender / Boulevard Trash):



Part Two (Busy Signals / Sleeping Aides & Razorblades):

Labels: power pop, punk rock, The Exploding Hearts, videos