Water All Around

"Water all around...never learn how to swim now." This site is devoted to great alternative music. Like "Swingin' Party" by the Replacements from which the aforementioned lyrics hail. These posts are intended to introduce visitors to bands that I believe deserve greater attention. If you wish to have an MP3 removed, email me at zotzedwriter@yahoo.com.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Exploding Hearts

Great music often ends in a tragic tale. This is one of those tales. Only it’s not about a drug overdose or a suicide or a killing. No one’s really at fault here, and that somehow makes it more painful. Maybe because there’s no obvious place to direct your anger.

The Exploding Hearts were a young punk band who had released just one album – the exceptional Guitar Romantic. On this 2002 disc, the Hearts eschewed those first-album hints of brilliance and went straight there. They were like a young Clash, blasting out powerful, poppy punk with a purpose. Only their purpose wasn’t the hopeless social conditions of working-class kids in England – it was the romantic, emotionally fragile psyches of American youth today. “Throwaway Style” and “Sleeping Aides & Razor Blades” below serve as two standout examples. It was songs like these that made you wonder what might come next – a London Calling for the romantically crippled?

But before the Exploding Hearts could even think of a second album, tragedy struck.

On July 19, 2003, the band played a San Francisco show in support of Guitar Romantic. After the show, they decided to make the drive back to their home city of Portland. At 6 a.m., bassist Matthew Fitzgerald fell asleep at the wheel. He and two other members of the foursome – vocalist Adam Cox and drummer Jeremy Gage – died in the ensuing accident. All were in their early 20s.

Only guitarist Terry Six lives on – as well as 11 outstanding songs that stand in tribute to a band that achieved so much in the little time they had.

[MP3] Exploding Hearts – Throwaway Style
[MP3] Exploding Hearts – Sleeping Aides & Razor Blades

Buy Guitar Romantic

Learn more at the Exploding Hearts website