After being dropped from Universal for refusing to score a commercial, The Features are looking none the worse for wear. Their new release, Interior Demonstration, is possibly the best EP to land on my desk in the past six months. The craziest thing is that while “Wooden Heart” is one of my new favorite Features songs, it’s not even the best on the album (”I Will Wander” gets my vote).
MP3: The Features - Wooden Heart
“Wooden Heart” is a tad more more western cowboy than the electric blues that defined Exhibit A. Granted, they still do a great job melding keyboards and crunching guitar, but it’s just that the main hook–which is one of thier finest yet–always conjures up the image of an old west gunfight. And in a way, that’s not too far of a leap to make from the song’s subject matter. The protagonist has been wounded, but not by bullets. Rather, the battlefield of love has left this poor fellow without a heart. Like any responsible Southerner, he then proceeds to fashion a new heart out of pine, but is even further saddned to find that it doesn’t work quite like he had hoped.
A quick Features update: They’ll be playing a short series of dates over the next month–including one at The Dame in Lexington, KY on August 26th with an instore at CD Central preceding it.
