From Bubblegum to Sky: A Soft Kill
By
Dave Heaton 9 December 2008PopMatters Associate Music Editor
Mario Hernandez’s third album as From Bubblegum to Sky opens with a pop-rock punch more immediate than anything on his solid-to-great first two albums. The opening tracks are especially catchy and sharp, with big guitar riffs burning and shining while the melodies smile sweetly. What often sounds like fun in the sun reveals itself quickly to be something darker and more complicated. “I Always Fall Apart”, one song is called, “The King of Failed” another, and it becomes clear that Hernandez’s songs, sweet as they are, are going to poke incisively into human fears and foibles, with no qualms. A stormy cloud clearly hangs over songs like “I Always Fall Apart”, but just as often the musical mood points upward while the lyrics cut into and against it, spilling out loneliness and hurt. “Even the sun will let you down,” he sings on the final track.
Dave Heaton has been writing about music on a regular basis since 1993, first for college newspapers and DIY fanzines and now mostly on the Internet. In 2000, the same year he started writing for PopMatters, he founded the online arts magazine ErasingClouds.com, for which he is still the editor and main writer. He also writes music reviews for the print magazine The Big Takeover and has a blog column on their website, BigTakeover.com. He has a Bachelors degree in Journalism (1996) and a Masters degree in English (1999), both from Truman State University, in the underrated town of Kirksville, Missouri, Though he does enough music-listening and writing for it to be a full-time job, it is not one. He has held a series of editing, writing and business communications positions at small and large companies in Kansas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Kansas City.
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