The Young Hearts – The Good, The Bad, & The Rest Of Us – EP Review
19th May 2025The Young Hearts have been dragging their gear through rain-slick back alleys of the music industry for years. From Deal, that little salt-bitten town where ambition rusts faster than scaffolding left overnight. They’re not supposed to still be here. And yet—they are.
What does survival look like when nobody asks you to?
The Good, The Bad & The Rest of Us isn’t just another record. It’s a blood smear on a motel mirror. It’s a confession whispered too loudly. It’s what you leave behind when the dream gets tired of waiting.
“Steady Hands”? That taste of blood tastes like copper pennies under your tongue—like the moment after you’ve bitten down too hard on something you thought was safe. They’ve stopped playing to win and started playing to stay sane. There’s more dignity in that than people realise.
Then “Outlaws” hits, and the room shifts. It’s fatherhood as a fever dream. Not sentimental. Not cute. More like the kind of fear you feel in the waiting room outside an ultrasound you’re not ready for. There’s a line in there—I won’t quote it, that’d be too neat—but it landed like a fork hitting a ceramic plate in a silent room. Cold. Final. Beautiful.
I played this at 3 AM after a fight that ended something I thought wouldn’t end. Just sat there, drunk on nothing, watching headlights scissor across my ceiling like ghosts on their rounds. And it felt like the band had been watching through my windows, nodding along like, yeah, this is what we meant.
“A Life on Fire” isn’t fireworks. It’s more like cigarette ash curling off the edge of a to-do list you’re never going to finish. Reflection. Regret. Not loud, but insistent.
And the sound? It’s Springsteen if he’d grown up on dial-up and disappointment. It’s Gaslight Anthem covering old country demos in a condemned building. There’s punk urgency here, sure—but it’s stitched together with threads that fray on contact. Americana, maybe. But it limps. And that limp is honest.
There’s a bit where the guitar tone breaks down into something brittle and buzzing, like bees inside a soda can. It shouldn’t work—but it does. Just like watching The Muppet Christmas Carol while going through a divorce. Somehow, weirdly, it gets you.
They’ve been noticed: Kerrang!, BBC 6Music, and Spotify playlists with names like Riot Grrrl Revival and Mellow Punks at Dusk. Fine. But those are just decals on the hearse. The real story is this: people are connecting. People who shouldn’t still be here either. That matters more.
This isn’t a comeback or a swan song. It’s a hand-scrawled message on a crumpled receipt:
Still here. Still bleeding. Still singing.
Score 7/10
Track List
1 The Good, The Bad & The Rest Of Us
2. Outlaws
3. Steady Hands
4. Hell Or High Water
5. A Life On Fire
Label: Self Release
Release: 12 June 2025
