The cover of Hung Up (On You) features an old wall-mounted rotary dial phone. It’s symbolic of an era when the utility of telecommunications was devoid of narcissistic obsession – could you imagine tediously working the rotary dial, getting through to your desired calling destination and providing an update on the latest banal development in your life?
The album art is symbolically resonant; Hung Up (On You) takes you back to the time you when you traded mainstream radio’s MOR pop rock for the glistening power-pop of The Raspberries, Big Star, Someloves, Orange Humble Pie Band and – importantly for the latest incarnation of The Stoneage Hearts – Red Kross.
It’s there from the start on Train at 8, recalling REM’s Driver 8 with a Stems-inflection and a mischievous wink. Sky High Heels is all shimmering elegance, Is She is The Who’s I Can’t Explain transposed to the antipodean suburbs and First Kiss is love in the backseat of your first car with The Trilobites on the tape deck. I Thought That Time is the moment in your dreams you never want to end, Motor Away is all brash attitude and youthful bravado, and wherever Menai Hotel is, it’s a damn good place to visit.
On Trying to Wash Away Some Of My Past, you’re caught between pondering the regret of the song’s title and the desire to clasp the track’s chunky riff to your heart and never let it go. If I’m Ready found its way to the inscription in a Valentine’s Day card, it’d surely be a recipe for everlasting love. I Couldn’t Change is the perennial defence when things don’t work out, and Can I Go Home says goodbye with a sneer, a smirk and a smile. It’s been a long time since we last heard from Stoneage Hearts, but listening to this record, it feels they’ve never been gone.
BY PATRICK EMERY
