Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Quick Hitters:: Haunted Hearts

We are finally getting back in the Canadian Mixtape game, and up next is the island known as Prince Edward (so send in any recommendations please). We've been scouring the potato fields and scanning the beaches with our metal detectors looking for buried trinkets. Already, we’ve found a nice roots outfit that has about as many myspace friends as Ryan Adams has records, but is heavy on potential.

With a name like Haunted Hearts, you can’t help but expect certain sounds and subject matter from the young PEI band. Of course you get hit with some bleak ballads about lost love, heavy in echoing guitar notes and organ bouncing that bounces around the emptiness and loneliness of the tracks off the walls of the open spaces, but Thank You, Goodnight shows the boys are good friends that like to drink beer, crank up the guitars and have a good time too.

The record opens up with Thank You Good Night, a spirited duet with piano and organ, female harmonies and dreams about a better life. The riff is chunky and gets you moving, but the piano that dances around the melody grabs a hold of you and won’t let go, and that energy strays into the bar room, piano honky tonk, Haunted Hearts. Obviously, I wasn’t in the studio when the quintet recorded the song, but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t filled with smiles and laughs when they tackled this track.

It’s hard to knock the band for any missteps – and to be fair there are a couple (Something For You really slows the record to a crawl after 10 songs and some of the tracks start slowly until well placed harmonies or piano bring you back in (Disappear When you Need To) – because they seem like real people and the type of guys we’ve know for decades. The songs they write come from the heart, not the Hansel-inspired mentality (“roots is so hot right now”) plaguing bands these days. Bottom line, when they get it right – like they do on the powerful Don’t Cross Your Heart, it’s hard not to sing-along and when it comes to good ole boys playing good ole tunes, that’s the only thing that matters.

Like many of us, the PEI band is conflicted by past and future. Acid revisits the good ole days and that immortality we all felt and every Canadian kid has felt the pleasure of opening the government cheque for $48.75 each and every quarter (encapsulated nicely in the whimsical instrumental, GST Cheques Are Here), but they have the foresight to look to the future and the potential it has, whether it’s something as simple as “bags of money”, land and an easier life or something as complex as finding the pure love for which we all pine or growing into the man we want to become.

For me, I think the band works best when they give the songs the freedom to run, keeping the tempo and energy high. There Is No Understanding Between Tree and Man glistens, perfectly crafted for BBQs and drives on the dirt roads of country towns. The closer, I’ll See You builds off a simple acoustic line, but the piano infuses the track rollicks along happily and even as it pushes towards the 6-minute mark, never loses momentum and finishes the record on a high.