Hearts and Unicorns

by

Giant Drag

Edit

Annie Hardy, Giant Drag's brains and brawn, grew up in the '80s on the opposite coast during the best years of alt-rock's creative and intelligent Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly's Throwing Muses recordings and tours. So two decades later how does Hardy so effectively recreate some of the best of the East Coast's (Rhode Island at that!) Throwing Muses' harmonies, lyrics, ironies, humor, and sound?

I'm not a music critic; I simply listen to music and have been for decades. I saw, and with every audience was mesmerized by, the Throwing Muses and Belly and Kristin Hersh and used to smile as my then three-year-old son, now 21, sang along in his car seat to Hunkpapa's "Devils' Roof" with the mistaken lyric "I have two dads" instead of "I have two heads."

Repeated playings of Annie Hardy's "Hearts and Unicorns" bring all that and more back to me. Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly would be proud of Hardy as will you if you give "Hearts and Unicorns" a chance.

A few of these songs may make it onto my mix discs.

The two member band is burgeoning in the underground. Evidence: White Stripes, Death from above 1979, Deadboy and the Elephantmen, the Black Keys, to name a few.

This two-piece sounds quite a bit different from that list. It's a bit calculated in many ways, but I'm still won over. Sand down all of the the brutality of Thalia Zadek's band Come, or dilute Superchunk and you're close. But lots of the melody is trace-able to early nineties pre-grunge brit-pop. A glimpse of fondness for early Deerhoof in spots, but if you appreciate Deerhoof you aren't likely to appreciate this album. It's not heady.

The "dangerous" lyrics and the censored song titles (self-censored), though not transparent, seem to be a ploy for attention. If she's as smart as Liz Phair she will likely end up either a trophy wife or OD-ing. I'd guess only the first, but I hope neither.

Good looking young girl fronting with a guitar is likely to draw a crowd, and this band is producing reasonably interesting if easily sellable music.

Some may find the "Wicked Game" cover at the end takes a trite song and tries reasonably but a general filler feel creeps in at the end of this album.

The single & the video tho' will probably sell beau coup copies via the iTunes store.

I'd give it 3 and 1/2 stars.