My Ears are Having a Heart Attack

Hailing from Pittsburgh, indie pop group Meeting of Important People will soon release their latest LP humorously titled My Ears are Having a Heart Attack.  The feel-good album is polished and has substance (nine standard tracks along with five bonus songs), but a few hokey tunes hold this one back from becoming something special.

Kicking off the disc is the suprising "Innocents Abroad" which sounds like it just arrived from the 1980's.  Definitely not what I was expecting from this band upon first glimpse of the album cover.  Meeting of Important People captures the essence of a bygone musical era with "Gotta Clean Head" singing clever lyrics over some old school background vocals.  "Old Folks" has a delightful funky vibe yet suffers with a minute of instrumentals to close the song.  Such a bad choice on what could have been a memorable track.  The standout from this album is easily "Oh, Will You Finally Go" -exclusively available here on Shakefire as a free download.  The song perfectly builds with instruments providing additional depth as the song progresses.

The band stumbles, and stumbles hard, with the hokey "Our Love."  I have a limit with how many times I can listen to someone sing "now I'm gonna make love to you" ad nauseum.  Now imagine someone rhyming that with "now I'm gonna do stuff with you."  It's hard to take such lyrical fluff seriously.  The same mistakes are repeated in the bonus track (with the cringeworthy title) "Jody, To Me Your Name Rhymes With Love."
 
I would suggest checking out "Oh, Will You Finally Go" available here on Shakefire.  If you fall in love with it, you may want to check out My Ears are Having a Heart Attack.  Besides the aforementioned "Jody" song, accoustic versions of "Innocents Abroad" and "Oh, Will You Finally Go" are included in the bonus tracks.  Be forewarned though - an accoustic version of "Our Love" is tacked on as well.