SAM MADISON - Vocals, Guitar
JOE YERRY - Guitar, Vocals
JAMES "JIMBO" BRITT - Bass, Vocals
DAVE BARTHOLOMEW - Drums, Vocals
Influences
Cheap Trick, KISS, Dead Boys, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, Stones, AC/DC, Foghat, New York Dolls, Hanoi Rocks, The Cars, Sex Pistols, Ted Nugent, The Clash, The Knack, Thin Lizzy, Richard Hell, The Hellacopters, TSAR, Marvelous 3, The Datsuns etc...
Sounds Like
Late 70's Rock/Punk with big guitars and big hooks.
Raleigh's Bleeding Hearts may have been "Stayin' After Class" on
their debut CD, but their newest release finds them graduated and all grown up
to a more mature, but still rockin', sound. That's not to say they've abandoned
their angst-ridden, 70's style riff rock, with hooks so big you want to hold up
your Pabst Blue Ribbon and scream "hell yeah" from the very first
note.
Musically "Nothin' On but the Radio," would fit right into any music
collection where "Cheap Trick at Budokan," "KISS Alive"
"Highway to Hell" are favored discs. Listen carefully and you'll hear
a little .38 Special sneak into guitarist Joe Yerry's riffage. And you'll
definitely hear plenty of musical references to North Carolina's own
semi-forgotten '70s pop-rock geniuses Nantucket.
But while the debut spent a lot of lyrical time dwelling on the good times and
excitement of youth, the latest CD explores what happens the morning after, when
the party's over, you're all alone and the good time girl who broke your heart
is headed off to rehab.
On "In a bad place," singer-guitarist Sam Madison sings about wanting
so bady to work it out but his lover can't because she's "in a bad place
right now." When he gets the ultimate "I love you like a brother"
rejection" on "It Hurts," all he can do is scream the title over
and over again until his voice is raw, like a kid who just can't believe he's
not going to get what he wants.
Maybe The Bleeding Hearts' Young, Loud and Snotty attitude hasn't grown up that
much after all!
REVIEWS OF "Nothin' On But The Radio"
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INDEPENDENT WEEKLY:
The Bleeding Hearts were born to be badasses, liars or both. In 2003, Sam Madison, a longtime Raleigh musician who'd played half a dozen styles of music in as many local bands, met a trio of New York immigrants: Joe Yerry played guitar, Jimbo Britt played bass, and Scott Taylor played drums.
Madison, in his mid-30s at the time and finalizing a divorce, wrote some songs about having fun in high school, and the band took off: The first Bleeding Hearts show nearly packed the Lincoln Theatre, and the band made its first record, Stayin' After Class, fast, after a blast of early buzz earned it a deal with Charlotte indie label MoRisen Records. Four tough dudes playing slicked-back rock 'n' roll with the sneer of a young punk: Pure badasses, it seemed.
But some people thought The Bleeding Hearts were liars. They looked tough, but their agile riffs and juvenile obsessions weren't rough enough for great Raleigh rock.
"We got a lot of attention right away, and there was instantly a backlash because of it," remembers Yerry. "Most of that album was silly, but it was like rock 'n' roll high school by an unknown band in Raleigh."
But The Bleeding Hearts stuck with it, playing often and writing plenty. Time and its troubles—a member leaving, the search for a replacement, a divorce for the frontman—shaped and steeled the band's edge. Its just-released second record, Nothin' on but the Radio, is more involved and involving than Stayin' After Class. The band says the four-year wait between records was worth it for them, at least.
The end result of a good record didn't make a tough few years any easier, though: The deal with MoRisen was scratched not long after the record was finished, and a New York-based indie picked up Stayin' After Class. Madison admits the record fell flat upon release. The label didn't know what to do with it, and The Bleeding Hearts—still somewhat new at being a band—didn't either.
On Stayin' After Class, Madison had written the songs and taught them to the band. Yerry's guitar lines mostly doubled his. Shortly after the record was made, though, these roles began to change. The four-piece slowly started to gel as a group, and new songs were written and arranged as a band.
Then, of course, someone quit.
"Me and Jimbo grew up with Scott. I mean, I've known him since I was 9 years old, and I'm 36," says Yerry, sitting on the back porch of Slim's, the rock bar in downtown Raleigh where he books bands and serves Madison drinks. "When he announced that he was leaving, he was shaking."
Madison had more than an album's worth of songs ready to commit to tape two years ago, but after so many bands and so many breakups, he was more than a little suspicious of The Bleeding Hearts' shelf life. He wanted to find a new full-time drummer before making the second record or simply move on to the next project.
"There is a sell-by date," says Madison. "We had been together four years by the point Scott left, and it crossed all our minds, 'Well, we may as well call it a day.'"
After spending the better part of the year looking for a drummer, The Bleeding Hearts found him in an unexpected place. Dave Bartholomew—a rock 'n' roll journeyman who toured with The Screaming Trees and plays in eight Raleigh bands including Tres Chicas—produced Stayin' After Class and was set to record its follow-up. Then he decided he'd also like to be in the band. The Hearts were as shocked as they were thrilled.
"He's into the band, but I didn't know he'd be into playing in the band. I never heard Dave play drums like that," says Yerry. "He nailed it on the first rehearsal."
Indeed, Bartholomew was perfect for the job. He knew all of the songs, either from producing or from hearing the new numbers in venues around town. And it was a band effort, says Yerry: "This is much more a Bleeding Hearts record than a Sam Madison record."
Mostly for that reason, Nothin' on but the Radio improves on Stayin' After Class in every way. The guitars don't simply state and restate the themes. The parts dovetail and redirect, lacing through feedback and into electric lines that sound written in italics. Britt and Bartholomew sound comfortable and cohesive, and Madison takes chances with his writing, opting for an acoustic guitar on one song and a modern-rock, manipulated vocals coda on another.
More importantly, Madison isn't writing like a kid anymore. Between records, he went through his second divorce. He and his wife had adopted a child, and he says the guilt he felt when he left his family found its way into the lyrics.
"This is the rawest stuff, and the most naked, I've ever allowed myself to be in writing," says Madison. "There are love songs on this album, and I've never in my life written a love song."
Songs like "In a Bad Place" and "Don't Judge a Book" deliver charged emotional scenes, and they're even more compelling stacked against a tongue-in-cheek take on adult situations like "Rehab Girl" or the veiled social critique of "Nothin' on but the Radio." The songs give the music the right to have an edge, to take chances. That had never been a strength of the band. The Bleeding Hearts, at last, sound the part of the badass—and, at last, they seem honest.
FROM ANGELA'S BLOG:
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When local Raleigh favorites The Bleeding Hearts announced their upcoming sophomore release, I confess, I was a bit worried. Was this new record to be just a repeat of the catchy, teenaged angst-ridden, power-poppiness of their debut album, Stayin' After Class? Would the boys be able to show us something new after playing the same tried-and-true set for several years? With this new record, would they get all sentimental and watered down with regrets contextualized in a soup of the rock-and-roll influences they so proudly bear?
Ahhhh no, dear reader.
I needn't have worried.
Our Hearts have crafted an album that deliciously, doggedly, unabashedly and most unapologetically yells out,Well, mother-fuckers, we were whelped on 70s radio and made into men by the lese-majesty of burning, blazing 80s punk. Here's what we got for ya'. Period. These boys acknowledge this metamorphosis with explosive energy contained in rounded, creamy, swooshy hooks that leave you feeling like you just gleefully gorged on a yummy Pop-Cream Pie and then washed it down with a Schlitz, a bourbon straight up, and a bump or two of snake-scale. The skin-tight riffs, smooth hooks and changes, and gritty melodies are obviously informed by punk and hard rock, but the songs never make it to filthy and low-down. It ain't that kind of project. No, the songs are more like "hard rock" candy - these rock boys delightfully tease us with power pop in the way that The Replacements and Eddie Money and Joe Jackson did the same. But it's simplified and jacked-up a notch with a brat-punk ethos pulled straight from The Ramones and The New York Dolls. (And, the Brooklyn band Heap is an ever-present influence). How so? This rock-n-roll throw-down is playful, sometimes cheesy, self-conscious, surreptitiously calculating, a little bit melancholy, and joyously balls-out studded with the necessary references to self-abuse and failure. This isn't just a party album.
Ohhhhh my......There's something else going on here.
Ah yes, this album IS the male ego laid bare in a hot and thick context borne directly from that self-same over-stimulated testosterone-drenched ego. And it's busting at the seams to take your sweet ass in and over-stimulate YOU. Sam Madison's shaggy, gravelly vocals convey a rude, rude, rude life that is, for the moment, pulled from the ashes to be all-too-willingly filched and exhibited for your god-damned entertainment. He merges his conflicting lemon-meringue narcissim and pitch black self-loathing and works the combo overtime for our pure listening pleasure (this mix is particularly manifested in the "alto-relievo" of his own conspicuously prominent guitar - he likes hearing himself but negates all that in-your-face bravado with I'll-never-be-born-again-and-saved semantics) . With a pop creation that self-aware and self-referential, the risk is there for an overly indulgent, chaotic mess. But, not with these boys.
They're too tight, too taut, too veteran too much ready to make fun of their own pain and sensitivity by drowning it in the pure and catchy white lightnin' of American rock-and-roll (Brit punk and Beatles influences not-withstanding). The lyrics play with the dilemmas of men who can't seem to live with or without their women, booze, drugs, and whatever other self-destructive vices that have brought them to where they are now, which, at the moment, is in a recording studio where they are smoothly twisting, thrashing, grinding, and playing out their demons and dirty deeds done dirt cheap just for you. In the midst of all of this churning, the bittersweet dirty yearning and remembering is never allowed to get cooked down into mush. It's hard and lean and arranged with just enough grit and grime to take this band out on a new limb. In other words, Nothin' On But the Radio confounded this listener's expectations. And that's what good rock-and-roll bands are meant to do. I highly suggest that you get you a big, thick, fat slice of this tasty pie at The Pour House next week. And, of course, wash it all down with cheap beer and good liquor.
Come hungry, baby.
Come hungry.
(I'll be flying in from Portland that night, but no matter how tired I am, I will make it to this show with a briskly burning More Menthol cigarette, ice-cold PBR, and overly-strong Tanqueray and tonic in hand. It's going to be worth it.I like to be overly-stimulated and I know they'll do exactly that to me. Period.)
FROM THE VILLAGE IDIOT:
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After four years the Bleeding Hearts have released their sophomore album, “Nothin’ on but the radio.” The band has changed slightly, adding Dave Bartholomew on drums. But Jim Britt still carries the bass line as Joe Yerry and Sam Madison show off their guitar chops. The artwork on the cover of their new album is evocative with a naked woman donning her inked skin and old style headphones. The guts in the CD prove to be just as interesting, once you start listening. Your experience starts off with the sound of someone fiddling through the dials on an old transistor radio until landing on the CD’s titled track. Lyrically these guys have matured in their songs, musically it seems they still have some favorite sounds they like visiting from their first album. But with lyrics that are at times dark, sad, loud and romantic the Bleeding Hearts don’t feel like their younger album. In “Nothin on but the radio”, Sam Madison laments as he sings, “No, way, no worry, to be convicted by the judge and jury.” It sounds like he is agonizing and apologizing a lot on this album. In the track, “Don’t Judge a book by its cover”, it comes through loud and clear as Madison croons, “to say that I was childlike would be the understatement of the year.” Even on the track, “No Pain”, the guitars of Madison and Joe Yerry sound like their crying. Couple that with the lyrics, “Can’t stop when the pain stops throbbing can’t remember cause you cant stop sobbing”, and you can see a pattern forming. They carry this vein of regret throughout most of their songs. In the song, “It hurts”, they belt out a balls-to-the-wall rock song that gets help in the screaming portion by Abe Quinn of Man Will Destroy Himself. “Status Symbol” jumps right out at you like a rock anthem. Extolling the virtues of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, “huge house, fast cars and tomfoolery” is what Sam sings about. They get right back to the love songs in “The one for you.” Madison sings, “If you have only known I loved you all along then I can be the one for you tonight.” The song, “Your Addiction” sounds like something Richard Hell might sing and “My Cross to Bear” has a nice punk drive to it, think a romantic love song sung by Tim Armstrong of Rancid.
The CD is a nice mélange of different songs wrapped up in the same common thread of agonizing over the choices we make in life. It’s a more grown-up sound, in both music and lyrics and it shows that once again, great music is coming out of Raleigh. Don’t agonize anymore, checkout “Nothin’ on but the radio” and let the Bleeding Hearts show you what wearing your heart on your sleeve sounds like. -- Michael Gorelic
"SELF ABUSE" Live at King's Barcade Raleigh, NC 10/06/2006 (by Karen Mann)
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Yo! Sorry we haven't been in touch sooner, fellas...great fucking time a couple of weeks back! You guys were great that night, and the record sounds fantastic.
Dr. Unk's is the place y'all played at last time...they're alright, but business is getting shaky. Pantana Bob's or The Corner are some pretty good rock venues...and of course, there's the City Hotel and Bistro. Hope to see y'all back 'round again.
Hey guys, Great show friday. I had a blast & Much thanks for having your buttons made by me! Appreciate the biz, Its always a pleasue to make em for bands I actualy like ha ha ha.
