AEM029 Unsacred Hearts

So I’m read­ing this Guided By Voices tell-all biog­ra­phy in an attempt to catch up on the last 20 years of their music. Being a child of the 2000s with respect to my artis­tic tastes, I seemed to have missed out on the lo-fi indie move­ment alto­gether, until peo­ple old enough to be my father kept men­tion­ing bands like Guided By Voices and Pave­ment with a kind of reli­gious rev­er­ence. And I have to say, my first impres­sions of the whole scene weren’t too great. I wasn’t imme­di­ately “struck” by the enor­mity of their tal­ents. But here I am, read­ing a Guided By Voices biog­ra­phy in an attempt to “get” it, and I’m just start­ing to gain some per­spec­tive. In order to fully appre­ci­ate some music, it’s nec­es­sary to sus­pend one’s crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties and just dive straight in, to accept that the mind behind it is infal­li­bly bril­liant, and that any mis­giv­ings on one’s own part are noth­ing but crit­i­cal para­noia. Once this hap­pens, some­thing clicks, and just like that a once scorned album turns into a peren­nial favorite. To para­phrase Scat records founder Robert Grif­fin on Guided By Voices’ noto­ri­ously abra­sive Vam­pire on Titus, “Once you get inside, it’s a pretty big house in there.” This is the mind­set with which to approach the Unsa­cred Hearts, so take my hand and let’s step inside the house.

The orig­i­nal Unsa­cred Hearts for­mula was a sim­ple one: bang it out fast and loud, rely heav­ily on fre­quent ref­er­ences (both lyri­cal and musi­cal) to the rock ‘n roll music that they wor­shipped, and drink as much beer as pos­si­ble all the time. In striv­ing to be equal parts Bruce Spring­steen, Robert Pol­lard, and Lou Reed, the Unsa­cred Hearts suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing some­thing that’s entirely their own, and a hand­ful of lis­ten­ers responded with appro­pri­ate enthu­si­asm. One critic once wrote, “They’re less of a band than they are UPS delivery-men, each song a neat lit­tle 3 minute pack­age of tight catchy riffs and shout/sung lyrics, each song like get­ting a hall­mark card from your Nana but instead of there being a ten dol­lar bill inside it just says ‘Fuck you.’” Another affirmed, “The Unsa­cred Hearts take their music wher­ever they damn well feel like, and they do it with a cer­tainty and swag­ger that is becom­ing rare.” Over the years, the band’s evolved as the lineup’s changed (Andy Bean of the Two Man Gen­tle­men Band replaced orig­i­nal bassist Andy Ross when he left in 2005 to join OK Go) and its mem­bers have mel­lowed out a bit with age. The urgency of their early records has dis­si­pated some­what, and the inter­est on their ten dol­lar “fuck you” has accrued to a hun­dred dol­lar “I don’t really give a fuck.” And they don’t. Well, they do, but they don’t. These are musi­cians who care deeply about their music and how it’s pre­sented, but if they hap­pen to come across as a bit too abra­sive on first lis­ten, they’re not about to write a post­card ask­ing for a sec­ond chance. It’s your loss, not theirs.

Ampeater is proud to pre­miere two new Unsa­cred Hearts songs on this 7-inch: A-side “Fake Kisses” and B-side “Sleep­walker”. The band gen­er­ally divides their cat­a­log into “rock” tunes (which are more post-punk than any­thing else) and “jazzy” tunes (mean­ing, any­thing other than “rock” tunes). Over time, the bal­ance of “rock” tunes to “jazzy” tunes shifted from some­thing like 90/10 to 30/70, and the band now reg­u­larly indulges in moments (and even whole songs) dur­ing which the testos­terone ooz­ing from their ampli­fiers has a chance to regroup and lis­ten to some­thing pretty. Even “Fake Kisses,” which is more or less per­fectly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unsa­cred Hearts’ “rock” side, has an air of matu­rity about it that didn’t exist at all on their 2004 Unsa­cred Hearts EP and was only hinted at on 2006’s In Defense of Fort Use­less. The tune opens with a groove-setting intro riff on the komuz, of all instru­ments. Guitar-master Dave Siegel brought this Kyr­gyzs­tani influ­ence into the mix (a lit­tle George Har­ri­son, any­one?) and it’s a wel­come addi­tion to his bril­liantly spas­tic gui­tar solo (a lit­tle Keith Richards, any­one?). Part of what makes the Unsa­cred Hearts more wor­thy of seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion than your aver­age bar band is the sheer vir­tu­os­ity of all its mem­bers. Drum­mer Travis Har­ri­son is an absolute beast on the skins (tune in to the drum fea­ture that starts around 2:30), and gen­tle­man Andy Bean lays down a rock solid bass. And then there’s vocal­ist and lyri­cist Joe Willie. He doesn’t so much sing as he does yell, and I’m never sure whether he’s yelling at me or with me, but I sup­pose it’s at times one, at times the other, and most of the time a bit of both. A lit­tle passive-aggressive atti­tude goes a long way, and it’s an essen­tial part of what makes the Unsa­cred Hearts a truly great band.

Side B “Sleep­walker” is sched­uled for release on the Unsa­cred Hearts’ upcom­ing LP The Honor Bar (due out in 20something on Seri­ous Busi­ness Records). This, in con­trast to “Fake Kisses,” is a so-called “jazzy song,” and is a bit more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the band’s “new direc­tion” (see: Tap, Spinal (n.) new direc­tion). Not to belit­tle the instru­men­tal con­tent in the slight­est, but this tune is really car­ried by Joe Willie’s lyrics. The strug­gle of the Unsa­cred Hearts has always been how to prop­erly frame the lyri­cal con­tent while main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent instru­men­tal aes­thetic. If “Sleep­walker” is any indi­ca­tion, they’ve finally mas­tered this bal­ance on The Honor Bar. Cer­tain albums go best with a nice thick book of lyrics, and this is undoubt­edly one of them. So, to save you the trou­ble of tran­scrib­ing them your­self, there are the first two verses and the chorus:

I don’t wanna stay in my bed so farewell avenue with yr beauty mon­i­tor
Farewell Eve­line with yer mother’s sick jokes I am here no more I am here no more
I felt my pulse in the dark the news was grim but I slept soundly then I rose at four
To gaze before the mir­ror in naked health it was dark I am invisible

I get caught sleep­walk­ing in the moon­light
A rid­dle in the street in the mid­dle of the night
I get caught sleep­walk­ing in the moon­light
Peo­ple think it’s strange I think it’s alright

It makes funny story but this tur­bu­lent sit­u­a­tion is no more
Noon sun dol­drums have set­tled like painkillers Ein­stein voted man of the cen­tury
He must be happy we must be happy for him and thank for his notions of time rever­ber­at­ing
From the cel­lar to the attic keep­ing me up at night keep­ing me up at night

I’ve never been one for poetry, or really even lyrics, so when a lyri­cist com­mands my atten­tion in a musi­cal con­text, it means that some­thing truly spec­tac­u­lar is going on. Jeff Mangum does that for me, so does Adrian Orange, and so does Joe Willie. So do your­self a favor and lis­ten, I mean really lis­ten, to what these guys have to say. It may not hook you on first lis­ten, it may not hook you on sec­ond lis­ten, but a lot of great lit­er­a­ture doesn’t exactly grab you by the col­lar and pull you in. It’s like read­ing Ulysses–it might be a lit­tle hard to get into, but you’ll be glad for the rest of your life that you made the effort and got through the sucker. It’ll change how you see the world, and if you’re lucky, how the world sees you back. So have a lis­ten, and get into it.

Ben Heller

Side A — Fake Kisses Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Sleepwalker Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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