The Dirty Hearts

The Dirty Hearts

The Dirty Hearts are either good at being bad or bad at being good, but good luck divining a definitive answer from their naughty New Wave. The local quartet's debut strikes such an alluring balance between contentment and catastrophe it's almost impossible not to get swept along, and its breakneck pace renders petty details like who did what to whom almost irrelevant. If you can catch them, there's some salient observations on modern relationships here, accentuated by taunting boy-girl vocals and disguised by sugary hooks that conceal their sharp edges until long after Romeo is bleeding. Try robotic love poem "The Body Song," Spoon-like "Style," and fluid "Take Her All Around" for starters, bearing in mind the Pixies' smirking specter is never very far away. If anything, this baker's dozen guitar-keyboard concoctions is a shade monochromatic, but so were the Thin Man movies, and they've held up just fine.