Glad Hearts is a band that has a very inappropriate name. The Oak and the Acorn, the latest offering from the New Brunswick based band, is undeniably melancholy, not in a self-indulgent way, but in a wistful, narrative way. It’s twangy, slightly folksy, and features a lead singer with a creaky but altogether pleasant voice.
The track list is solid: not very many bad tracks are present, and some are terrific. The album should also be noted for its surprisingly good use of small incidental pieces—a few 20-second to 1-minute songs are scattered throughout the album that spice up the mix without bringing the album to a halt. One of these, “Light Rail Waltz,” is good enough that you’ll almost wish they’d managed to stretch it out a little longer.
The end result is an album has impeccable cohesion. It’s not a concept album, but it was definitely made to be listened to from beginning to end. And whether it’s the sparse, low-key music or the words that go with them, it tugs at the heartstrings deftly. The Oak and the Acorn is one of those albums that engages you emotionally and builds to a great hopeful catharsis at the end that leaves you drained but happier for it. “Nothing if We’re Not Moving,” which is a duet, deserves special attention— hopefully we’ll have more of the female singer on this track in the future, because she’s great.
The downside to the album is that while nothing is bad here, very little is genuinely exceptional. Yes, it engages the listener emotionally, but there are a lot of places you can go for a bit of banjo and some lyrics that make you stare into the distance and sigh, and this album only does so much to pull ahead of the pack. Combine that with the fact that it’s very low key, and it seems almost doomed to be background music. The Oak and the Acorn is the sort of album that engages if you let it, but it doesn’t compete all that hard for attention. Still, standout tracks like “Nothing if We’re Not Moving” and “The Hub City” show that fans of sparse, earnest folk-influenced indie rock could do worse than giving this album a chance.[By: Ryan Simmons]
Rating: 3/5
Release Date: March 24, 2009

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