My American Heart

Hiding Inside The Horrible Weather

[2/5]

After debuting in 2005 with an arsenal featuring little more than by-numbers melodic mod-emo, today’s My American Heart have their still-young tickers set on braver pursuits. Consider disc No. 2 growing pains. They regularly still sound like a poor man’s Armor For Sleep fronted by a self-conscious Nic Newsham (especially on “The Shake (Awful Feeling)”), but it’s clear on the title track and “There Are More Frightening Things…” that they’re eager to test their limits, even if the results are inconsistent. Unfortunately, exhausting ballads like “Dangerous” burn what momentum their other efforts might call for. But what ultimately damns Horrible Weather is that despite My American Heart’s earnest-and very apparent-efforts to infuse their songs with imagination, they’re still uniformly boring. And few bands, regardless of age or ambition, can overcome that. (WARCON) Tristan Staddon