Sounds From The Junkshop #110 - Young Heart Attack

 

"I got a song for you, it's on my stereo" - Young Heart Attack - Starlite

Talk about yer bands who seemed to be the future of rock 'n' roll for about five minutes only to disappear as soon as they'd arrived. Young Heart Attack were a group of old school rockers from Texas who had the riffs and heaviness to appeal to the Kerrang! readership but enough of a grasp of melodies and hooks to appeal to the NME indie crowd as well. They should, by rights, have been huge. But...well, obviously they weren't otherwise they wouldn't be appearing in Sounds From The Junkshop now, would they?

The story goes that the group supported SFTJ alumni Gay Dad when they were touring their second album over in the States and GD singer Cliff Jones was so impressed by 'em that he offered to become their manager after his own band broke up. As I've mentioned in Gay Dad's SFTJ entry, Jones was a shrewd operator who knew how to play the media and with his connections, Young Heart Attack would quickly end up signed to XL records.

Now it'd be easy here to take the "hype over substance" cynical approach but the truth is that Young Heart Attack were a band who, for once, did justify the hype. 2003 saw them crank out a storming run of singles - Over And Over, Misty Rowe, Tommy Shots and the fist-pounding Won't Get Fooled Again soundalike Starlite (probably their best moment) which were pretty much irresistible. The group were notable for their twin vocal attack of Chris Hodge and Jennifer Stephens which soared over guitarist Chris "Frenchie" Smith (who scarily resembled Mr Kraft from Sabrina The Teenage Witch's long lost metalhead younger brother!)'s crunching AC/DC style riffs.

The group would get plenty of good press in nearly all corners of the music press for their excellent Mouthful Of Love album and it was deserved - admittedly 2003 wasn't exactly a vintage year for great albums but this one was definitely up there. Yeah, fair enough, maybe Young Heart Attack weren't doing anything that hadn't been done before but they blasted those songs into your skull like a pneumatic drill, so much so that you couldn't help but smile and nod your head to them. And there was none of yer tedious over-reverence that blights so much of the NWOCR crowd today - this was ten tracks, 34 minutes, bish bash bosh, in and done.

Young Heart Attack's press profile was growing all the time and they ended up supporting both Motorhead and the Darkness (I remember hearing rumours at the time linking Stephens romantically with Justin Hawkins but I've no idea if they were true or not). I saw them a few times at the Cockpit and the Well in Leeds and they were an awesome live band who could get even the surliest indie kid off their feet and headbanging. I usually ended up leaving their gigs soaked in sweat and grinning from ear to ear.

And then...they suddenly split in 2004. Supposedly the group's A&R man had left XL and the people who came in weren't interested in the band's good press, just cold hard numbers. And unfortunately on that front, the group hadn't got a Top 40 single (Tommy Shots, their highest charting effort, stalled at number 54) and the album had only managed to get to number 71 in the charts. The group's rhythm section quit and, having not made any ground in their native States and suddenly being cut off from being able to tour the UK without a record deal in the bag, the band would break up.

As it turned out, it would only be a temporary hiatus and 2007 would see the group reform with a comeback album, Rock And Awe, surfacing the following year. Unfortunately, it was a poor relation from that storming debut with the production sounding flat (probably a consequence of the group being back on the minors) and the songs just lacking that spark of old a bit. I saw them on the tour for that album and they still kicked arse live but there was a general feeling that their moment had passed and they drifted into inactivity shortly afterwards.

Wikipedia still has Young Heart Attack as an ongoing concern but it's been well over a decade now since I last heard anything from them so I suspect that even if they haven't called time on the operation for good then they've definitely been on a very lengthy hiatus. It's a real shame - I'm still not sure how exactly they didn't break overground the way they should've, maybe it was that old favourite of being too heavy for the Libertines crowd but too melodic and cheerful for the emo-loving Kerrang readership at the time? Either way, the world definitely missed a trick there. It's always good to dig out an album that you've not listened to in years but still sounds great and revisiting Mouthful Of Love while writing this 'ere article, I can confirm that it still sounds great now. Look it up and see for yourself.