New Bedford, Massachusetts quintet Half Hearted Hero has been playing with honest and raw emotion since 2008. The band released its unique and engaging EP on Animal Style Records, Running Water, in 2011. While the Half Hearted Hero of 2011 were on the Punk side of the Pop-Punk spectrum, the band inches further from the Pop side with Whatever and enters 2013 as a Punk band to watch for the new year.
The dark Untitled opens the extended play with a dark riff and chord progression. Vocalist Anthony Savino’s bark is the perfect fit to the lost and confused mood of the song. Whereas the listener will be expecting a rousing chorus to pick the song up from its depths of self-reflection, Half Hearted Hero does not give in to the expected structure of every pop song ever. Instead, the opening track keeps us on our toes, waiting for something that will never come, yet leaving us satisfied all the same.
River continues Whatever in its solid Pop-Punk fashion, a nice contrast to the prior three minutes of dark Punk Rock that might’ve left the listener feeling somewhat hopeless. Vessel, on the other hand, sounds hazy in comparison to the previous two songs. The song accelerates and decelerates at sudden times that will immediately perk the listener to its different sound. Here Half Hearted Hero channel some of Basement’s Colourmeinkindness in terms of the opening vocals and soft bridge. It’s a change of pace from the Pop-Punk of River and all of Running Water that shows an entirely different side to the already unique band.
Faint Feeling acts as an acoustic interlude by clocking in at just under a minute and a half. Savino tones down the yelping to an almost conversational half-whisper. While Faint Feeling is nice in and of itself, it seems out of place and breaks up the pacing of Whatever.
Framework plays out similarly to River at half the time. It’s an extremely raw Pop-Punk tune that brings the pace back up to where it should be after the awkwardly placed Faint Feeling. Good Terms, however, ups the ante by showing off guitarists AJ Mills’s and Clinton Lisboa’s chops with the introductory riffs and quick but heavy-hitting chord changes. The outro of Good Terms is also the perfect way to end the song on a somewhat upbeat note for a few seconds that eventually wind down into a quite guitar line that plays wonderfully into Whatever’s penultimate track, Direction.
Direction opens with some strings and an acoustic guitar being masterfully finger-picked. While this song begins as a second acoustic tune for an eight-track EP, it quickly transforms into a high-octane, introspective Punk anthem. Savino sings with sincerity and legitimate concern, “How did we get here? / Where did we go wrong? / We were just trying to stay in touch". His lyrics can make anyone question his or her position in life. To top it all off, the track slows down to reintroduce the wonderful strings that sound exactly how a full-length or EP should end.
But the title track comes in to round at the 25 minutes. While seemingly incomparable to the fantastic Direction, Whatever is a track that one would expect from Half Hearted Hero: a darker, Punkier Pop-Punk song from a band that is self-aware of its prowess. Although the closer is a good song on its own, it hardly holds a candle after Direction thus making this EP a little on the long side.
Half Hearted Hero’s Whatever is a great edition to their growing discography, but it’s not enough of forward-looking one. There are times on Whatever when the band looks to darken their sound in a way that’s hardly done in the genre, but the tone doesn’t stick as an overall change for throughout the eight songs’ somewhat awkward pacing. While this EP will garner the band fans galore, it will only just sate the ones that have been with Half Hearted Hero from the start and are still waiting for a sound-defining release.
Tracklist:
1. Untitled
2. River
3. Vessel
4. Faint Feeling
5. Framework
6. Good Terms
7. Direction
8. Whatever
Rating:
Written by Joe Wasserman
