“If you had your way, I’d have a lobotomy”

The Exploding Hearts – “Sleeping Aides & Razorblades” from Guitar Romantic [2003]

Next up in the “Burned Out, Didn’t Fade Away” series is Portland power-pop punk band, the Exploding Hearts. After releasing a 28-minute debut album that sounded like a lost classic from London, circa 1977, the Hearts quickly gained notoriety and garnered notices from taste-making rags like Maximum Rocknroll and Pitchfork. On their way home from a show — where pop-punk powerhouse Lookout! Records reportedly scouted the band — the band’s van flipped over and three of the members were killed. Learn more here.

Only an odds-n-sods collection survives — and so the band’s reputation rests on Guitar Romantic, a few stray singles, and the thought of what might have been. And that’s one of the hallmarks of “Better To Burn Out” artists: the weird tragedy of never being able to hear the songs that might have been written. But of course, as Keats shows us in “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” the most beautiful thing is what we cannot grasp, that forever eludes us. Therein lies part of the charm of the Burned-Out.

What would you like to buy? Sleeping aids? Razorblades?

Posted by Glenn