Unsacred Hearts EP

Review

No one who heard Cold Memory's 2002 indie rock album Damage/No Damage could have predicted this as the follow-up: guitarist Dave Siegel and drummer Travis Harrison splintered off to form a retro-punk band. As Unsacred Hearts, their self-titled debut EP is a promising and enjoyable effort, all 14-minutes-and-40-seconds of it. EPs don't get briefer than this: five of the seven tracks clock in at under two minutes. In those short structures Unsacred Hearts prove themselves to be clever boys, tossing off the delicious pun "Secret Dakota Ring" as one song title, and telling in "Stuck Inside a Mobile Home With the Mansion Blues Again" an amusing tale of NYC street musicians and Bob Dylan. In a more serious vein, the Clash-ish "We Were a Band" tackles the un-punk theme of leaving rock & roll for "real jobs," and is very effective in doing so. An album unsubtle in its ethos -- "Oh no, I was born too late / Take me back to 1978" -- Unsacred Hearts successfully whets the appetite for more, and is recommended without reservations.