Customer Reviews

Hearts of Oak

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Okay, so he's copped everything he can from the early, angry Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello, and he's sounding a little bit Brit for a guy from the Garden State. But Ted Leo isn't just another false idol in the neverending search for the second coming of The Boss. Leo's often been compared to Springsteen, and there's really something to it. They differ sylistically (instead of music from the birth of rock, Leo mines the insightful pop-punk of the gents mentioned above, plus the Clash, Television, and so forth), but both are all about intensity tempered by intelligence. Like Springsteen, the power of his music--to overwhelm the senses and summon strong emotion without shutting off the listener's brain--makes itself known on album work but makes itself truly FELT only in live performance.

The album is, in whole or in part, a 9/11 reaction. This means it has the potential for both a built-in audience and a built-in cringe factor. But Leo doesn't take the easy way out, on either score, and comes up with something rich in its ambiguities. Again like Springsteen, he manages to catch the complexity of characters in change--from the hesitant growing-up singalong of "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?" to the searing depiction of a man's belated awakening to the world's brutishness in "The Ballad of the Sin Eater." Throughout, there's precise but casual playing, solid singing, and production which seems like a happy accident--of the kind which comes about after many hard hours on the boards. Stylistically, the band stretches from standard lightly-fuzzed power pop with rock-steady grace notes to encompass some quasi-folk strum and even some Celtic sounds. It's fresh.

That said, this album is perilously close to a 2-star experience. Anyone who shoehorns the word "historicity" into a song risks crossing the barrier between really good Gang of Four and...well, really bad Gang of Four. But the band's passion carries the day--Leo's insight doesn't become navel gazing, and his comments on world affairs aren't the ego-stroking of your standard rock star but the genuinely uncertain musings of someone taking the measure of a world that's changed.

Ted Leo writes songs every "rock revival" band wishes they could write. In essence, Ted Leo is one of the strongest voices in rock these days, and on Hearts Of Oak, he and his band The Pharmascists tighten their attack and produce some of the best straighforward rock n' roll in years. Mr. Leo takes the best elements of Elvis Costello, The Clash, Billy Bragg, Chuck Berry, and The Stones and boils it all down into a vibrant and potent mix that trancends its influences. If bands like Phantom Planet and OkGo water-down the herky-jerky new-wave of Costello and The Cars for easy consumption, Mr. Leo is the real successor to Costello or Ocasik. Hearts Of Oak is just as strong as the fantastic The Tyranny Of Distance as Ted makes every vocal yelp, every guitar solo, and every lyrics burn. The guy is a genius, and I can say that with a straight-face and without fear that I might take that back a few years down the line. This is the real future of rock n' roll, kids; Hearts Of Oak is timeless, fresh, and beyond satisfying.

Ted Leo just keeps getting better. Ted has been writing songs and playing vital music for several years now, coming up from the New York and D.C. punk scenes of the late 80's and early 90's. After listening to his work with Chisel, especially their classic "Set You Free", it's hard to imagine that release not being a welcome peak to any artist's career. Following the demise of Chisel, Ted released the rousing "Tyranny of Distance" with The Pharmacists. Ted continues to evolve as a songwriter, including the best elements of punk, pop, folk, and soul in his thoughtful tracks. After giving so much of his time and energy to the independent music scene over the years, it's almost surprising that Ted's live and recorded work still crackle with such refreshing vitality. Ted seems to have a bottomless tank of energy and enthusiasm, and "Hearts of Oak" celebrates all of the joy and passion that exist in music today.

Just listen to the sound bites for the songs "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone", "I'm A Ghost", "The High Party", and "Hearts of Oak". That should be enough to sell any respectable fan of rock and pop music on this disc. These are all great tracks, and the strength of "Hearts of Oak" doesn't stop there. Ted builds and reflects upon each track, giving each song a distinctive voice, yet holding it all together as a cohesive collection that can (and should) be listened to from start to finish in one sitting. Lyrically and musically, this is one of the best CDs you can buy in 2003. In what is already shaping up to be a good year for music (with new releases from Cursive, White Stripes, Idlewild, AFI, and others), I can guarantee that Ted Leo & The Pharmacists' "Hearts of Oak" will be topping many a year end best list. That shouldn't necessarily influence your decision to buy this great disc, but quality speaks volumes and "Hearts of Oak" is loaded with quality.

Ted is also touring extensively with The Pharmacists in support of this disc, and their sweat drenched, upbeat, rockin' live show is well worth the usually low price of admission. Buy the disc and check out the live show.

The problem with Pop music today is the fact that it is personality, not musically driven. In the not-so-distant past, some great pop music was made, without MTV, without boy bands, and definitely without a humongous, capricious music industry dictating trends. The Jam, Elvis Costello, Alex Chilton, the Kinks, the LA's and myriad other bands put out great, unpretentious pop, at a time when it was not simply more profitable to do so. Fast forward to the genre-divided 90s and "0s" where pop exists in so many disguises (From Britney to Blink 182 to Metallica), you need a prescription to get "good" music. This is where Ted Leo and the Pharmacists stand and deliver. Absorbing and blending many influences and putting out completely fresh, original music; I was awestruck the first time I saw Ted Leo and they keep getting better. Every track on this album is great, but "Where have all the rude boys gone?" and "I'm a ghost" are classic bits of pop craft. The awesome "Ballad of sin eater" has one of the best lines ever in a pop song, "And the French foreign legion-you know they did their best-but I never believed in TE Lawrence, so how the hell could I believe in Beau Geste?" Brilliant! While the songwriting is top notch throughout, it is really Ted Leo's ability as a guitarist/vocalist that makes this album shine. His jangly guitar sound is infectious, as are his multi octave vocals. There are more hooks on this album than in Quint's sea-side shanty. However, nothing on this album feels forced or heavy handed, just perfect song writing, presentation and production. You'd be a fool to miss it.

OK, I'm one of those types who buys too many CDs, too often because I hear a catchy indie-pop gem and hope I've found the next great thing. Most of those discs get played once and then are off to the resale bin. But every now and then, I stumble on to something that can still provoke a sense of joy and wonder. This is one of those albums and I have to admit it caught me out of leftfield.

On the surface this is straightforward, high energy pop in a punky/new wave vein. The guitars are uniformly sharp, the vocals winsome and the hooks piled on. Its also highly literate--I can't think of another artist who uses the word "ossify" anywhere in a rock record, let alone in maybe the catchiest point of the best tune on the record. Most of the songs don't follow the typical verse/chorus/verse structure but tend to be longer narratives. Don't fear though, they're catchy as heck and there's not a weak tune in the batch.

Reading the other reviews, I see references to a number of other bands. To me, the reference points that keep popping up are Squeeze and Split Enz, although this rocks out slightly harder than either. Whatever. The fact is, this is one of the best discs I've picked up in months and its stayed in my heavy rotation for abot 6 weeks now and I don't see it going anywhere soon.

NOTE: I don't go back so far as Chisel, but Leo/Pharmacists previous effort, The Tyranny of Distance is nearly as good and worth checking out.

Simply put, Ted Leo is the man. He's a true craftsman of music, able to write some of the catchiest songs I've ever heard. Hearts of Oak is a fine album, easily one of the best of the past couple of years.

Hearts of Oak opens with the intro like "Building Skyscrapers..." that leads right into one of the catchiest songs on the album, and I believe the first single, "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?" It serves as possibly the best example of how catchy his songs can be. This album is full of energy with loud drums and bright guitars, all serving as a backdrop for Ted's amazing voice. He puts every bit of energy into each song and it's evident.

There is not a single dud on this album. There's more variety on this album than on Tyranny of Distance, which could be a bad thing for some but is a very good thing for everyone. With the addition of full time band behind him, Ted's songs sound so much more fleshed out. They have more meat, more texture; they sound fully realized which leads to better songs than on the last album. I actually prefer this album over Tyranny, despite Tyranny being one of my favorite albums of all time.

Hearts of Oak is a album chock full of catchy, energetic, fun songs perfect for dancing and singing along to. This is defiantly one of my desert island albums and Ted Leo is defiantly one of my favorite artists. A definitive songwriter, Ted Leo is one of the most over looked and under appreciated song writers of the nineties. Buy this album and rejoice in how much fun it is to listen to.

Having never listened to Ted Leo until recently, I can't make any statements or express any opinions about this album's comparison to those prior to it. However, I can say this: this one is wonderful. The album's bright textures are evidenced on tracks like "where have all the rude boys gone?" and the listener gets a taste for Ted Leo's masterful lyrics and/or politics on "The High Party" and the title track, "Hearts of Oak" to name a few. Leo's powerful, and at times, wonderfully shrill, voice carries the layered, clean guitar lines in time with an eclectic array of percussive instruments, which can be found on almost every track. After giving this a listen, and a second, and a third, and a fourth and so on, I am going off as soon as I can to purchase "The Tyranny of Distance". "Hearts of Oak" hasn't left my CD player since the day I bought it, and I'm sure it won't for a long time to come. I recommend this to anyone who has a taste for great politics, great music, and great lyrics.

OK, wow, yeah. We get it, Ted, you rule. When I first heard his 2001 release, The Tyranny of Distance, I was somewhat nonplussed, mostly because the last thing I needed at the time was another album that channeled Elvis Costello and The Jam. After a while, however, I grew to love it as the masterpiece that it is, and so it was with tremendous impatience that I waited for a follow-up, to see what Leo would come up with next.

What he did, simply, was follow up with Hearts Of Oak, a record that on the surface sounds like a sequel to the prior one, but in reality ups the ante with even more fine-tuned songwriting. Thirteen songs in 50 minutes have never sounded so whole, so compact. Leo has an amazing gift for melody, and an enormously expressive and urgent voice with which to carry it. This album nails that point home over and over again. The other amazing thing is how Leo incorporates his obvious influences into his songwriting and arrangements without kneeling before any of their altars. This album would not sound the way it does if it weren't for The Clash, Thin Lizzy, or The Specials (to whom he pays tribute on the second song, "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?"), but no part of the album could ever be taken as a knockoff, or even a well-executed imitation.

If I had to choose favorites from the album I'd have to say the aforementioned "Rude Boys...", as well as his love letter to Cambridge/Boston, MA and New Jersey, "Bridges and Squares". The latter holds my heart both because of how masterfully the songwriting is executed but also in a very personal way, as most of it takes place mere blocks from where I live. Regardless of my neighborhood pride, though, I can imagine that song being about just about anywhere. It destroys me with its wonderful imagery of curiosity about life in the face of geographic comfort.

There have been releases that have excited me so far, but none that have completely recharged my faith in intelligent rock music. This is the first essential album of the year.

Martin Pavlinic
Junkmedia.org Review

One of the best albums released in 2001 was "The Tyranny of distance," filled with powerful hooks and tons of feeling; it seemed unlikely that Ted could make a follow up worthy.

Then along comes "Hearts of Oak" with a sound that fuses punk, power pop, funk and mod tidbits. Packed with educated lyrics and naggingly catchy melodies, all doubts were put at ease.

With songs like "where have all the rude boys gone" ( a tribute to the specials), "dead voices" (straight power pop), "hearts of oak" (funky funky funky),"i'm a ghost" and "a crane takes flight" (a work of art); this CD is filled with thumping rockers, Irish folk, a touch or two of Thin Lizzy, Ska, and everything inbetween.

It is sure to be on everyone's year end best of.

This is easily one of the most original, exciting rock bands around today, hands down.

Thank God I picked up a recent issue of Rolling Stone, or I still wouldn't have heard about this guy. It's true what they're saying, Ted Leo is a throwback to early Joe Jackson and The Clash, but he merely uses them as a template to which he adds his personal touch. Let's start with the tunes - catchy as hell. Elements of punk, funk, pop, techno all rolled into one. The lyrics are apparently littered with political references, but honestly they go by unnoticed because you're too busy focusing on what a great voice he has. This guy can stretch his vocals like there's no tomorrow, registering falsetto tones as easily as you and I blink our eyes. I'm not sure what Ted Leo's ambitions are, but this is music that deserves to be heard by the masses. This is music that could usher in a whole new thing at a time when rock still needs a kick in the pants (sorry but I don't think all the "the" bands are the saviors they've been made out to be).