HEARTBEAT

CARS SIX-STRING INNOVATOR ELLIOT EASTON TAKES A DEEP DIVE INTO THE GEAR AND GUITAR SOLOS THAT DRIVE THE EMPTY HEARTS’ PERSONALITYPACKED SECOND ALBUM.

- CHRIS GILL

USUALLY, WHEN FAMOUS MUSICIANS JOIN TOGETHER TO FORM a supergroup, the objective is to create a band that hopefully will become more than the sum of its parts from both creative and commercial perspectives. But in the case of the Empty Hearts — comprised of lead guitarist Elliot Easton (The Cars), vocalist/ rhythm guitarist Wally Palmar (The Romantics), drummer Clem Burke (Blondie), and bassist Andy Babiuk (The Chesterfield Kings) — the main idea was four like-minded musicians getting together to have fun.

“Andy called each of us individually back in 2013 to ask what we thought about forming a band together,” recalls Easton. “We’re all old friends. The plan was to play the kind of music that was the reason we all played music in the first place, inspired by the bands from the Sixties who inspired us.”

It’s pretty easy to determine which bands influenced the Empty Hearts when listening to the group’s eponymous debut album released in 2014. Various songs bear distinct hallmarks of the sounds of the Beatles, the Byrds, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Who combined with the attitude of garage rock bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Pretty Things and the Standells, and guitar riffs that edge into the early Seventies a la Led Zeppelin and T. Rex. Perhaps the most surprising feature of the album was how close it sounded to the musicians’ influences and how little it sounded like the music that each individual was previously best known for.

On the Empty Hearts’ follow-up effort released this year, appropriately called