CD Reviews

The Exploding Hearts

Shattered | Dirtnap

By ANDREW MARCUS | January 2, 2007

3.5 Stars

At its best, power pop is the only guitar-heavy music that defies gravity. Even Cheap Trick’s suicide vignette “Candy” doesn’t quite lower the spirit. Portland, Oregon’s Exploding Hearts, a band who lost three of its members in an August ’03 van accident, come straight out of that school of power pop. On their debut, the aptly titled Guitar Romantic, the band revived the genre’s wistful crunch without the skinny-tie preciousness of ’80s new wave or paint-by-numbers predictability. Instead, they modeled themselves as earnest ’70s-era punk rockers. Shattered, a collection of outtakes, rarities, and alternate takes, offers more of wiry-voiced Alex Cox winking at romantic overstatement (since the girl left him, he’s been “eating out of spray-painted garbage cans and sleeping at the bar”) and guitarist Terry Six, the only original member who survived the accident in 2003, squeezing out classic Mick Jones leads. The disc’s bonus video, of a performance two nights prior to the fatal accident, is a raucous reminder of the sheer power of the Exploding Hearts’ bratty, soulful music.