Album Review: Hungry Hearts - It's Love

I've been astonished a few times before by the strange surge of bands with similar band names. It's like if a collective consciousness of musicians delves into the same naming cookie jar. The most obvious one are the wolves of the music world: The Wolfnote, AIDS Wolf, Wolf Parade, Wolf, etc. On a more local and recent scale, the coming about of Hungry Hearts, Haunted Hearts and The Beaten Hearts seems oddly coordinated, spanning three Maritime provinces and forging their own in-roads in music industry nods in their respective styles.

Hungry Hearts' "It's Love" oozes with throaty anthemic sing-alongs (every one in the band takes on some vocal duties, which leads me to believe that they must speak amongst each other always in rhythm and rhymes.  In a sense, the sound reminds me a bit of Hot Water Music, with hints of post-punk sounds littering around the corners of breakdowns and bridges. On the other side of things, there's a Canadiana indie-rockness to their sound that a Noisography Live Show review has likened to the stream of bands following The Weakerthans' footsteps. I'll have to agree with that review that it seems odd that among the panoply of singers among the band that there isn't little touches of added instrumentation; keyboards or percussions. Mind you, with the layers of vocals, there's not too many voids in the sound that need filling.

The first four songs on the album set a nice foot-tapping tone to the album, with "East Coast" sure to rouse a few echoed chants from any audience. The album slows it down with "Dirty Little Sinner," a little emotive ballad that acts as a sort of intermission for the anthems to follow. I must say that enjoyed the first half of the album more than the latter half, but all in all, the albums seems to be a great chunk of tunes for the university crowd and anyone with an ear for locally-grown talent.

As an added bonus, the record has a great sound as whole, thanks to heavyweights Brad Perry and J. LaPointe who both have great capabilities behind the boards.


by Mario Gautreau

Comments

Kyle said…
I think the name suits this band well. The songs are obviously a tip of the hat to The Boss in many respects so why shouldn't the band be as a whole? I saw these guys at the Seahorse once, they stole the show, they had amazing energy on stage.
Anonymous said…
THESE GUYS ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZZZING!