You know as a reviewer that you’re onto a loser when the best thing you can say about a record is that the cover art is kind of pretty. And certainly, Jade Richie’s multicoloured, abstract, noodly composition is a good deal more interesting than the tuneless indie-punk dross that accompanies it.
Hearts in Pencil is a bog-standard guitar/bass/drums trio that draws on uptempo REM, the wasp-in-the-speaker guitar style of Cake’s Greg Brown and the phoney sea-song imagery of The Coral, but remains uniquely, thoroughly, irredeemably rubbish at all times and in all modes. Producer/engineer George Shilling at least maintains a level of competence and professionalism throughout, but he seems to have little talent to work with. Principal offender is lead singer Lozzo, who doesn’t actually bother with any singing but instead yelps out various randomly adolescent thoughts about sex, death and the Hadron Particle Collider.
All four of the songs on this EP are terrible, but for the combination of irritating pseudery, Bert Weedon Play-In-A-Day acoustic guitar work and truly awful vocals, ‘A Place Called Pandemonium’ is as bad as they come. “Ghosts of the Conquistadors” is a bit more energetic and the electric guitarist knows his Blur but there’s still nothing worth hearing in four minutes of chugging by-the-numbers boredom. “Dusk is Drowned Forever” flirts with delayed guitar before settling on acoustic lameness from thereon in. The vocalist sounds royally pissed in both the American and English senses.
Hearts in Pencil don’t sound like they are trying a leg. You look for energy, wit and youth and all you get is a putrid canal of bland. Give this a wide berth.