The Exploding Hearts were one of those bands that slowly grew on me rather than wowing from the get-go. I liked their debut album, but it took just a little bit of repeated listenin’, and becoming totally smitten with their cover of FU2’s “Sniffin’ Glue,” to imbed a full appreciation of them firmly in my head enough for me to look forward to their next release. Sadly, that release never came to pass thanks to a car accident killing most of the band in one fucked up swoop. As a result, the title of this collection of odds and sods is poignantly fitting. Like its predecessor, the music here illustrates that these kids were capable of plundering deep into the power pop (a term that is in reference to the late-‘70s/early-‘80s music phenomenon that spawned The Beat, The Quick, The Plimsouls, and countless others and not the slew of crappy bands that have co-opted the term to distance themselves from the pop punk ghetto into which they so deftly fit) vaults for inspiration and wicked hooks, tempering things with enough punk rawness to avoid any potential hypoglycemic fits and ending up with some seriously good, seriously catchy songs. Bands this good right out the box are scarce, so the loss of one before they’ve achieved their full potential means we’re the worse for it.
–jimmy (Dirtnap)