UK orders over £50 ship free!
...according to our Brett on Wed 15 Apr, 2009.
Line immediately sound a lot like The Faint but with a tinge more electro and a tad less bombastic indie rock. The record's ten seconds in and the review's pretty much done so now I've just got to wait it out a bit and see if it changes. I reckon that gives me a window of about fifteen minutes where I can get away with looking at horrendously offensive and upsetting comic strips made in MS Paint on the internet before Phil starts asking how many more reviews I've got to do. I liked the first couple of Faint albums though, everyone in here laughs at me for that. I'm a pariah. OK then, a couple more songs in and it still sounds like The Faint but differences are starting to emerge, the focus is squarely on the fella's lyrics and there's more of a blatant 80s pop influence in there.. Soft Cell, Visage, all that stuff. It's called Hearts!Line is 30-year old Neil Wells, who as a member of various bands and collaborative projects has steadily carved out a unique persona that segues pure electronics with indie musicality and vocals. ‘Hearts’, his debut solo album, delivers heartfelt lyrics of loves and lives lost and won across stark yet warm electronics. As Line, a chance online encounter with Uncharted Audio led to his 2005 debut 7" proper, `A Snowstorm in a Globe/Observe the Mechanics'. A slew of compilation appearances followed, as well as live shows with the likes of Fog, Alias, The Bug, DMX Krew, Kid606, Debasser, Cylob and Panda Bear, topped off in 2008 by an appearance on Uncharted Audio's "Signals" subscription 7" series alongside artists such as Plaid, Si Begg, King Cannibal and label mate Cursor Miner. Now as we enter 2009, Well’s debut solo album is ready to be unveiled. Opening with the spine-tingling rawness of `Optics', Neil's clinical approach to electronic music production appears to contrast starkly with the raw emotional state of his words and delivery of them. Yet perhaps they have more in common with each other than might at first be suspected. Whilst speaking recently of a complex sequencer he used to make many of the early Line tracks, he summarised it in exactly the way you might expect him to describe the relationship between two lovers - `quirky, unstable, frustrating but ultimately incredibly inspiring'.A rare thing then, occupying a space at once overtly analytical and yet buffeted by random tugs of the heartstrings, `Hearts' has many stories to tell, and it tells them as well as they could be told. But despite an apparent simplicity, it is a dense record of many layers, hidden meanings and abstract musings. Like its subject matter, it is something to be marvelled at, shocked by and deeply immersed in.
Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!
Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
Leeds,
LS11 9RT, UK.
Tel/fax: (+44) 0113 245 4399
Email: phil@normanrecords.com
Follow us on Facebook
We want to be the best online record store in the UK, so please send us your ideas and feedback.
(We don't spam and we won't give your email address to anyone else. One email a week is all you'll ever get. Read our privacy policy.)
For payment and account functions on this site, all traffic is encrypted with SSL. Our SSL certificate is provided by Thawte: view our certificate.
This site is regularly audited for security problems by Netcraft. For more information please take a look at our Netcraft Security Seal.
We don't handle credit card details on this site. When it comes to taking your card payment we hand you straight over to eWAY - a secure, PCI DSS compliant payment gateway.
