“Heart on a Wire” by Lost Romance

One of the most obvious differences between contemporary mainstream rock and that of the past is the absence of the dirty, nonconformist element of danger once responsible for getting rockers banned from the radio and their output branded with ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers. While I’m not saying that Lost Romance are reviving the explicit side of the rock aesthetic in their new single and music video “Heart on a Wire,” you’d be hard-pressed to find another band exhibiting the adrenaline of the genre’s legends quite as well as they are today. They’re still getting their feet wet as a group, but overall, they’ve made me a little more excited about what’s in store for 2021. 

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The music video for “Heart on a Wire” essentially exemplifies the efficiency and DIY method of creation that serves as a core element of the Lost Romance sound, but it’s not so barebones that we’re left with something that looks and feels like it might have been shot on an old camcorder. There aren’t any big props or plot devices independent from the lyrical narrative to get in our way and over-conceptualize what we’re actually looking at in this piece; there’s just music and the musicians who play it, drawing off of a classic template whilst refusing to recycle anything we’ve already seen before. 

“Heart on a Wire” boasts a vocal harmony in its chorus that is really striking whenever I hear it, and I would even attribute its style to being more of a hidden pop adornment than an homage to anything old school. I absolutely think there are a couple areas of this group’s sound that they’re not quite tapping into as much as they could if given a little more time to develop, and chief among them is their pop-influenced composing skills. They’ve got the capacity to do something more akin to Phil Norby, Skyfactor or even The Persian Leaps with this sound, and it will be very interesting to see how it evolves over the years. 

Between the nimbleness of this groove and the overall punch of the band’s play in general, it’s obvious that Lost Romance aren’t a group that get intimidated by playing loud, fast rock n’ roll that doesn’t require a lot of virtuosity to sting as hard as a yellowjacket. One of my favorite things about this song is that it doesn’t waste our time with a lot of ridiculous soloing and artless complexities best left on classic rock radio where they belong, and with any luck its creator’s contemporaries will take a page out of their book on this front. 

I hadn’t been listening to Lost Romance before stumbling upon this single and its music video just recently, but I’m all-in on their sound after getting into this. “Heart on a Wire” doesn’t challenge the entire system, but instead just a couple of its most annoying parts – namely commerciality, pseudo-creativity and the idea that every pop/rock single has to revolve around a sleek hook. This is bold and robust with a purpose, and it’s got my 100% approval. 

Mindy McCall