In spring of 2011, a curious white-label 12" started popping up in London record shops. The two very well-crafted synth-pop tunes on it belonged to a duo called Stubborn Heart-- one of the only details to be hand-stamped on the vinyl's clean, white inner label. "Need Someone" was the record's excellent A-side, clocking in at six minutes and not wasting a single second. On it, a beat stutters and ticks like early Junior Boys, rubbing up against a bell-like synth and yearning, overlapping vocals, not too far away from ideas on James Blake's eponymous debut.
"Need Someone" appears again here on the duo's debut, self-titled record and it sounds as good as it ever did. Its inclusion, though, marks its third different release of 2012, which awkwardly highlights a lack of ideas elsewhere on this record. While "Need Someone" still boasts a lot of energy and curiosity, much of the material on Stubborn Heart feels a little drab and lifeless by comparison.
Songs like "It's Not That Easy" and "Interpol" come across as jaded, weighed down by sluggish pace and lack of movement. The latter locks into a nice enough groove but any early promise slowly ebbs away across its five minute duration-- it feels like a relief when it finally crunches to an end. Even when Stubborn Heart do hit a stride, as on the decent-enough "Starting Block", they're let down by a lack of lyrical depth.
For much of the record, singer Luca Santucci's yearning vocal obsesses over failed romance-- so much so that "Starting Block" line, "I feel like I'm repeating myself, can't write about anything else, everything else right now sounds insincere" does at least carry some weight in its honesty. There might well be sincerity to Santucci's wounded lyrics but he never moves beyond scab-picking toward the kind of emotional payoff that great break-up records all share. Stubborn Heart is like the friend who, six months after a break-up, has grown a beard, put on a few pounds, and is no fun at all to have a conversation with. There's no sense of journey to the romantic trauma and across a full hour's running time, the wallowing becomes monotonous. Fortunately, Santucci's voice can sound fairly unique and carries enough characterstic yearning that he doesn't need to over emote.
There are a couple of moments of promise, but they're stuck at the front: "Penetrate" starts the record off well, contrasting laid-back vocals with busy rhythms to good effect. Its shimmering, spacious chorus is easily the prettiest moment on Stubborn Heart, too. "Better Than This" also works a succinct chorus hook nicely, its central lyric, "I can do better, you can do better, we can do so much better than this" teetering between feeling acerbic and comforting.
Stubborn Heart is frustrating because the band can do so much better. There's not a lot of light to be found on this record-- the beats are heavy legged and much of the action happens in the miasmic low-end. It all sounds so serious without any real reason for it. You wish they'd snap out of the funk because when they do, Stubborn Heart are capable of making sly, futuristic pop music with real potential. There's not much of it to be found here.
