The Bleeding Hearts

The Bleeding Hearts In the News

The Bleeding Hearts: Big rock, mid-sized city —The Independent Weekley

Talking "Local Bands" w/ Karen Mann —Random Thoughts Blog

Local rockers The Bleeding Hearts are having their CD release... —New Raleigh dot com

What do the new Bleeding Hearts album, and pie with bourbon have in common?

— Angela, Who Luvs Zhang Yimou and Sumptuousness

When local Raleigh favorites The Bleeding Hearts announced their upcoming sophomore release, I confess, I was a bit worried. Was this new record to be just a repeat of the catchy, teenaged angst-ridden, power-poppiness of their debut album, Stayin' After Class? Would the boys be able to show us something new after playing the same tried-and-true set for several years? With this new record, would they get all sentimental and watered down with regrets contextualized in a soup of the rock-and-roll influences they so proudly bear?

Ahhhh no, dear reader.
I needn't have worried.

Our Hearts have crafted an album that deliciously, doggedly, unabashedly and most unapologetically yells out,Well, mother-fuckers, we were whelped on 70s radio and made into men by the lese-majesty of burning, blazing 80s punk. Here's what we got for ya'. Period. These boys acknowledge this metamorphosis with explosive energy contained in rounded, creamy, swooshy hooks that leave you feeling like you just gleefully gorged on a yummy Pop-Cream Pie and then washed it down with a Schlitz, a bourbon straight up, and a bump or two of snake-scale. The skin-tight riffs, smooth hooks and changes, and gritty melodies are obviously informed by punk and hard rock, but the songs never make it to filthy and low-down. It ain't that kind of project. No, the songs are more like "hard rock" candy - these rock boys delightfully tease us with power pop in the way that The Replacements and Eddie Money and Joe Jackson did the same. But it's simplified and jacked-up a notch with a brat-punk ethos pulled straight from The Ramones and The New York Dolls. (And, the Brooklyn band Heap is an ever-present influence). How so? This rock-n-roll throw-down is playful, sometimes cheesy, self-conscious, surreptitiously calculating, a little bit melancholy, and joyously balls-out studded with the necessary references to self-abuse and failure. This isn't just a party album.

Ohhhhh my......There's something else going on here.

Ah yes, this album IS the male ego laid bare in a hot and thick context borne directly from that self-same over-stimulated testosterone-drenched ego. And it's busting at the seams to take your sweet ass in and over-stimulate YOU. Sam Madison's shaggy, gravelly vocals convey a rude, rude, rude life that is, for the moment, pulled from the ashes to be all-too-willingly filched and exhibited for your god-damned entertainment. He merges his conflicting lemon-meringue narcissim and pitch black self-loathing and works the combo overtime for our pure listening pleasure (this mix is particularly manifested in the "alto-relievo" of his own conspicuously prominent guitar - he likes hearing himself but negates all that in-your-face bravado with I'll-never-be-born-again-and-saved semantics) . With a pop creation that self-aware and self-referential, the risk is there for an overly indulgent, chaotic mess. But, not with these boys.

They're too tight, too taut, too veteran too much ready to make fun of their own pain and sensitivity by drowning it in the pure and catchy white lightnin' of American rock-and-roll (Brit punk and Beatles influences not-withstanding). The lyrics play with the dilemmas of men who can't seem to live with or without their women, booze, drugs, and whatever other self-destructive vices that have brought them to where they are now, which, at the moment, is in a recording studio where they are smoothly twisting, thrashing, grinding, and playing out their demons and dirty deeds done dirt cheap just for you. In the midst of all of this churning, the bittersweet dirty yearning and remembering is never allowed to get cooked down into mush. It's hard and lean and arranged with just enough grit and grime to take this band out on a new limb. In other words, Nothin' On But the Radio confounded this listener's expectations. And that's what good rock-and-roll bands are meant to do. I highly suggest that you get you a big, thick, fat slice of this tasty pie at The Pour House next week. And, of course, wash it all down with cheap beer and good liquor.

Come hungry, baby.
Come hungry.

(I'll be flying in from Portland that night, but no matter how tired I am, I will make it to this show with a briskly burning More Menthol cigarette, ice-cold PBR, and overly-strong Tanqueray and tonic in hand. It's going to be worth it.I like to be overly-stimulated and I know they'll do exactly that to me. Period.)