2015 has started in earnest and it has done so in a somewhat similar fashion to 2014 in this sense – the amount of email from a variety of people across the world that I receive over the course of a business day can be rather overwhelming for a (mostly) one-man effort; however, it has made this site’s mission of covering and presenting a variety of music from all over the world regardless of country of origin or genre much easier.
Yesterday, I received an email from the St. Catherine’s, Ontario-based indie rock band, Heavy Hearts. Their forthcoming EP, Somewhere A While Ago is slated for a February 3, 2015 release, and the album thematically focuses on the small town life that the members of the band know rather intimately. As the band wrote in an email to me the EP captures the despair one could feel as their friends, associates, classmates and others move away and grow while somehow your life seems in stasis and stagnant. But it also reportedly captures the small town feel in which everyone knows your name, face and life and the regular bar is kind of both a respite and a dreaded reminder of what you could have been and what you’re not. As a city kid there are aspects of that I can’t possibly associate with but there are things that I am intimately familiar with and it’s something that comes up as you get older – the recognition that you have to accept the massive difference between what you could have been and what you are, as well as the life that your decisions gave you. And that includes the fact that maybe your life might be in stasis while everyone else seems to be pushing forward and growing.
Somewhere A While Ago’s first single “Garden Arm” is comprised of muscular and blistering guitar lines, thundering drums bears a resemblance to a number of contemporary rock bands including Foo Fighters but to my years, I’m reminded of The Life and Times‘ Suburban Hymns which also deals with similar themes.
