The Exploding Hearts – Guitar Romantic: Expanded & Remastered LP Third Man Records

Vinyl LP pressing. Digitally remastered and expanded edition. Drawing spiritual inspiration from the likes of the Buzzcocks, Undertones, and Nick Lowe, the attitude and implied delinquency of The Exploding Hearts was more in line with that of au courant Naughties Warped Tour line-ups. With ten undeniable songs clocking in at just 28 minutes, the Hearts’ indisputably essential Guitar Romantic operated as the punk rock equivalent of Ernest Hemingway’s writing: Nothing extraneous, simple, straightforward, to the point, deserving of no additional flourish or accoutrement, with every creative decision pushing forward the work as a whole. Arguably, perfect. Yet barely three months after it’s domestic release, with momentum building and Lookout! Records sniffing around, band members Jeremy Gage, Adam Cox and Matt Fitzgerald, all barely in their twenties, would die in a tragic van accident that ended the band. Guitar Romantic (Expanded & Remastered) doesn’t just present the album with a sharp, spiffed up remastering. It also found original album producer Pat Kearns spinning the old reel to reel and archived DAT tapes for the first time in twenty years. This enabled Six to drop in nuggets like little snippets of pre-and-post-take studio dialogue amongst band members, adding audible life to a record that for too long has been overly-associated with death. If that weren’t enough, the remastering uncovered the previously forgotten organ-heavy “King Louie Mix” of the fan favorite “I’m A Pretender.” Even more intriguing was the discovery of a completely unheard take of “So Bored”, previously not even known to have been recorded at the Guitar Romantic sessions. Of most excitement though is a remastered version of “Busy Signals” (a song originally released on a small-quantity 7-inch in January 2003).