Albums by this artist

Mouthful Of Love (2004)

Young Heart Attack

Mouthful Of Love

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» JONATHAN COHEN | SENIOR EDITOR

Young Heart Attack Mouthful Of Love XL Recordings, 2004 RiYL: AC/DC, White Stripes, Queens Of The Stone Age

If you're a young band looking to your hard rock elders for tips on longevity, choosing AC/DC as a role model isn't a bad bet at all. Who cares if the Australian combo has been writing the same couple of tunes over and over again for 30 years: there's no denying its place as one of the most influential groups of its kind, ever.

So who cares if Austin, Texas' Young Heart Attack sounds a lot like AC/DC, to the point where you can almost pick out specific songs being pilfered if you listen to Mouthful Of Love often enough? Who cares that they actually rip off the sequencer intro to The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" for "Starlight?"

Not me, because there's one hell of a rush to be enjoyed from minute one of the ass-kicking title track (think a faster "Thunderstruck") to the pounding closer "Misty Rowe" (think "Shake A Leg" from Back In Black), and it isn't being spearheaded by some British guy with a Freddie Mercury fetish wearing a cape and a leotard.

Instead, the music here simply rocks, very hard. Roaring riffs flatten the competition and shred like a metal head on a two-day speed bender, while the rhythm section sledgehammers the whole thing home. The dueling male and female vocalists aren't singing about much of anything other than getting drunk and getting lucky, but isn't that what we all want to be doing right now, anyway?

I can't fully explain why, but for some reason, rock'n'roll just like this sounds better than ever right now. And when Mouthful Of Love opens up and says aaah, you'd be a fool not to listen.

JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"