{"id":40616,"date":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/buried-in-the-backyard-of-my-heart\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:12","slug":"buried-in-the-backyard-of-my-heart","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/buried-in-the-backyard-of-my-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Buried In The Backyard Of My Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

When last we encountered those musical extreme-sports athletes The Hit & Mrs., they were cranking out the utterly unique Web-only album 100 Under 60<\/i>.<\/a>\u00a0 That\u2019s as in 100 songs under 60 seconds.\u00a0 Don\u2019t bother asking why\u00a0— \u201cbecause we can\u201d being the obvious choice\u00a0— because the point of mentioning this feat is simply to set the scene for the first quote-unquote normal album from this endearingly demented trio.<\/p>\n

Nelson \u201cNelly\u201d Heise (vocals, guitars, keys, mandolin, harmonica), Robert \u201cBubba\u201d Heise (backing vocals, bass, keys) and Stacie \u201cV. Stak\u201d Archer (drums, percussion) are The Hit & Mrs., and their vibe is as original as any group with this many influences could be.\u00a0 Opener \u201cHijaxed,\u201d in addition to containing the witty lyric from which the album earns its title, is like a Bizarro-world mind-meld between Whiskeytown and T.Rex, a rockabilly beat getting sledgehammered by fat glammy guitars as Nelson Heise\u2019s playfully greasy vocals ride the crest of this shambolic romp.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cLittle Miss Sunshine\u201d and \u201cCorina\u201d continue the theme of big fuzzy guitars over interesting backbeats.\u00a0 The former\u2019s a double-time rhythm whose punk undertones are prettied up with acoustic rhythm guitar and organ; the latter somehow manages to lope and thunder all at once as the song\u2019s heavy guitars, deadpan lead vocals and off-center lyrics bring the band\u2019s Kinks fixation into focus. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeen A Long Time\u201d offers a more ballady flavor while still packing plenty of punch in the choruses\u00a0— and then things get seriously heavy and weird as the boys let their inner Pixies run wild with the dark, swirling, super-heavy \u201cPasadena\u201d into \u201cBurning Circles\u201d into \u201cGraveyard Digger.\u201d\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

Things finally ease up again a bit as \u201c7\u201d rolls along — as track 10, of course.\u00a0 Or at least, it starts out with a rather trance-y, droning feel under Nelson\u2019s dark and twisting lyric, until the song abruptly shifts tone and then shifts again.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost like they took three different arrangements from 100 Under 60<\/i> and spliced them into one song.\u00a0 Things don\u2019t get any more settled as you proceed.\u00a0 By the time the desperate, bludgeoning \u201cTwo Days Later\u201d finishes, you\u2019re looking for some sort of relief, which arrives in the form of the sarcastically jaunty pop of closer \u201cDisguise,\u201d whose acid lyric finishes things out in full snark mode.<\/p>\n

Buried In The Backyard Of My Heart <\/i>has a lot going on under its mercurial surface\u00a0— you don\u2019t write songs this intense without having a few demons around in need of exorcism\u00a0— but the arrangements and performances are full of enthusiasm and panache.\u00a0 For a group awash in influences, The Hit & Mrs. manage to deliver an album that feels bracingly fresh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7851],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40616","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-hit-mrs","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40616"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}