Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alternative must sees 6 months ago
  • A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash 6 months ago
  • Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019 7 months ago
  • 25 years of SPOT Festival: DiS Picks Its Best 11 7 months ago
  • Twelve Hours Of Drone Is Just The Beginning: DiS Does Big Ears 8 months ago
  • IDLES Smash It In Sheffield 8 months ago
  • More bands announced for DiS partnered Fuzz Club Eindhoven 8 months ago
  • The Shape Of Punk To Come?: DiS Meets Crows 8 months ago
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

Kevin Blechdom

Eat My Heart Out

Label: Chicks On Speed Release Date: 11/07/2005

8797
John_Brainlove by John Brainlove July 17th, 2005

So, people get confused. People get fucked up. People get hurt. People fall apart. Everyone has been dumped and cried about it for ages, and everyone has dumped someone (and maybe regretted it). People sit and talk about it for hours, over way too many drinks. Mobiles add a whole new aspect to dumping, being dumped and getting over it all - you gotta get rid of the ex's number, especially if you're out drinking way too much all the time, which let's face it, you probably are. Then there's the whole culture of weepy movies, breakup TV, weepy adverts, sad songs, sadder songs, over-sentimental programmes... it can make the whole experience of splitting up quite abstract. Where's the sweeping orchestra music in the background when you leave your ex's house with that last box of stuff? And where's the neat-and-tidy together/grieving/apart cycle that's apparently the standard pattern now according to every sitcom and soap on Channel 4? The media has stolen all the most precious moments of our lives and shined them up until they're so glossy that the real thing somehow feels fake and incomplete.

Kevin Blechdom's new record contains all this and more. Or does it? Fuck knows. "Eat Your Heart Out" is an album drowned in a surreal bontempi-cheese sound palette - ridiculous fanfare trills, nauseatingly fake electric piano, the cheapest electronic handclaps this side of Pete Waterman and more melodrama than you'd find in a week's worth of Family Affairs. And there's a large dash of self-help language and introspective analysis in there too. Sometimes, you can kinda start to empathise with it all a little. But then, suddenly - a saxophone solo that's so horrifically cheesy and reverbed that it's hard to keep your dinner down, and it's all switched back to fakeness an maybe-irony again, gritty and hysterical and false and cheap and so awful that you wanna tear the CD out of the player and throw it away, but so compulsive and catchy that it's just impossible.

(left) Blechdom live in Berlin (right) the original album artwork

Trying to pull the wires out of this record and see exactly what makes it such a mess of contradictions doesn't really help. Why is this horrible set of sounds wired into such genuine heartbreak? Why is this horrific desperation framed in the most obnoxious, huge, inflatable gold-gilt frame in the shop? The frame is so huge it's sometimes hard to focus on the picture. It sounds like a wedding singer, but put through a hellish seven year marriage with multiple affairs, violence, emotional and psychological torture, and then set up with a Casio keyboard and a lungful of nitrous oxide and asked to play her own divorce party. Imagine the carnage.

So - musically horrible and conceptually ambiguous, but impossibly addictive and bizarre, this record escapes any easy definition that you try to impose on it, and comes at you from so many angles that it makes you dizzy. Every time you get close to packing it all away and understanding exactly what it is, there's another explosion of ideas and you are left doubting everything you felt so sure about a minute ago. Terrifying post-modern neurotic/ emotional realism! You don't find that in many pop records do ya.

Album of the year.

  • 9
    John Brainlove's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alternative must sees


  • A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash


  • Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019


  • 25 years of SPOT Festival: DiS Picks Its Best 11


  • Twelve Hours Of Drone Is Just The Beginning: DiS Does Big Ears


  • IDLES Smash It In Sheffield



Left-arrow

The Features

The Way It's Meant To Be

Mobback
8780

Queen Marys Revenge

Queen Marys Revenge

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137
  • Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136

    Festival Review


    Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019

  • 106135
  • Festival Review


    25 years of SPOT Festival: DiS Picks Its Best 11

  • 106134

    Festival Review


    Twelve Hours Of Drone Is Just The Beginning: Di...

  • 106133
  • Live Review


    IDLES Smash It In Sheffield

  • 106132

    Festival Preview


    More bands announced for DiS partnered Fuzz Clu...

  • 106131
  • Interview


    The Shape Of Punk To Come?: DiS Meets Crows

  • 106123
MORE


    feature


    DiS meets Justice

  • 27270
  • feature


    Panic Prevention: At the drink with Jamie T

  • 14183

    feature


    The Knife: Swedish purveyors of alien synergy

  • 27337
  • Column


    DiS Does Singles 22.04.13: Daft Punk, Savages, ...

  • 89944

    DiScover


    ReDiScover: Low

  • 12734
  • In Depth


    Lou Reed: An Eu-lulu-ogy

  • 93330

    DiScussion


    Emo? Twee? In unnecessary defence of Neutral Mi...

  • 93713
  • Interview


    Ace of Bass: DiS Meets Royal Blood

  • 97097
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2019 DROWNED IN SOUND