Raw Honesty With A Touch Of Gentility
It’s all too easy to label a band as emo nowadays and often the label falls far from the mark. More a ‘scene’ than an actual music genre these days, it’s a word that strike fear into a true music fan from 100 paces as images of floppy fringes mingle with middle class teens who have bugger all to rebel against and so try to scare their parents with the most accessible and safest form of rebellion. In its purest form though emo is simply emotional lyrics strapped to music that has a little bite to it regardless of what the current image dictated. Luckily Speak Your Heart adheres to the old school formula doing exactly what their name suggests and putting the emotion firmly back into emo.
From the fragility of the instrumentally cladded opener ‘Lions Hunt Elephants Now’, Speak Your Heart immediately set out to bring a tear to your eye as the touching music melts into ‘Are You The Witness’. Building upon beautiful melodies that swim neatly against tentatively thumping rhythms, ‘Are You The Witness’ finds the young band capturing Dashboard Confessionals’ alluring combo of intriguing melodies swarmed around passion fuelled lyrics that literally explode against the brisk rhythms the band creates. Bringing an acoustic beauty to each track that adds a softer tone to each track, ‘Under These Lights We Are Transparent’ exudes a raw honesty that instantly captures your attention as ‘The Callous And The Kind’ whirls with pain staked humility that gets gently washed aside for the jangling ripples of ‘These Words Are Simple’ until you are literally pulled into Speak Your Heart’s world and become gleefully lost there.
For many Speak Your Heart will sadly be dismissed as merely yet another emo band but for those who take the time to look passed the label the reward is plentiful. Still a young band, Speak Your Heart is already creating anthemic striving songs that will tug at the heart strings with the brutally beautiful sincerity. For the emo haters there is nothing here, for those who like their music to have some integrity and true passion sparkling out of every line, prepare to meet your new favourite band.