Heart That's Pounding

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Album Information

Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 40:45

eMusic Review 0

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Maris Kreizman

Audiobooks Editor

04.06.10
Grasping to embrace her sunnier side
2010 | Label: Arts & Crafts / IODA

You can't get more brazenly earnest than starting a song with the lyrics "I wear my heart on my sleeve." But somehow the cliché works for Sally Seltmann, a wispy Australian singer/songwriter who comes across as part Loudon Wainwright-quoting folk goddess, part timid soprano in the high school choir. Seltmann's confessional third album (her first two were recorded under the name New Buffalo) finds the singer grasping to embrace her sunnier side. "Get yourself up/ Get yourself out of bed/ This is a new day," she repeats in the Belle & Sebastian-evoking "On the Borderline," a breezy pep talk for the recently dumped and mopey. Yes, her plucky sentiment can sound like self-helpy goo, but the song's undercurrent of melancholy allows her to get away with it — in the face of despair, what choice does she have but to keep setting the alarm clock and convincing herself to move on? While Heart That's Pounding contains a fair dose of sparse slow burners ("Book Song" is a heartbreaker), it's "Harmony to My Heartbeat" and "Dream About Changing," with their handclap-filled moments of pop grandeur, that remind us that Seltmann was the co-writer of the Feist smash "1234."… read more »

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Embrace the Earnestness!

vodem

If you embrace the earnestness, this is really a lovely record.

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They Say All Music Guide

With Heart That’s Pounding, Sally Seltmann steps out from behind her New Buffalo moniker to deliver her first album released under her own name. It’s a subtle difference, but then Heart That’s Pounding is a subtle album, despite its pumped-up title. The sound and tone of these songs are more or less in keeping with Seltmann’s New Buffalo fare; once again, her voice works equally well in girl group homages, reflective folk, and just about anything in between. However, her songwriting is more direct, and she manages to accomplish something that stymies many writers: crafting happy songs that don’t sound smug or cloying. Heart That’s Pounding is all about being in a more-or-less satisfying relationship and the challenges that presents. Seltmann sounds just as convincing on the contented “Harmony to My Heartbeat,” which celebrates togetherness, as she does on “Set Me Free,” where she asks for a little breathing room from all this bliss. As the saying goes, happiness writes white, and while Seltmann makes the most of the relatively narrow emotional range Heart That’s Pounding occupies, at times the album seems in danger of disappearing into a serenely sugary fog, since her voice is so wispy and songs like “On the Borderline” and “5 Stars” blend into an (admittedly lovely) blur. Despite her skill at crafting layered aural confections, the album is most striking when Seltmann goes for an intimate sound and confessional lyrics. “Book Song”’s chamber pop gives listeners the space to get into Seltmann’s world, and sounds like a lost song from Nico’s Chelsea Girl to boot; the album closer “Dark Blue Angel” offers a cautionary tale about keeping out sadness set to profoundly simple folk. Meanwhile, the clever storytelling on “Dream About Changing” and the doo wop coda on “I Tossed a Coin” prove that there’s more going on in Heart That’s Pounding than listeners may pick up on the first time around. A truly cozy album, these are songs that Seltmann can be proud to call her own. – Heather Phares

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