"Your Heart Not Mine" Review - The Pitch
“My Oh My accomplishes everything it sets out to do in creating a feel-good, alt-country album that evokes the sepia-toned summers of the 1970s, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
There are quite a few things that My Oh My does very well on its debut, Your Heart Not Mine. Lead singer A.M. Merker has a certain booze-drenched roughness to his voice, the kind that always sounds so good when paired with a rollicking piano and some driving guitar chords, of which My Oh My offers plenty. It's an album made for warm weather and drinking with the windows open.
Christin Kuchem-Logan and Sarah Dolt are the backup singers, and sometimes their additions work — as on the powerful title track, "Your Heart Not Mine," an anthemic show closer if there ever was one — and sometimes they're unnecessary. On "Whiskey Pillow," the oohs and ahhs feel out of place in an otherwise raucous tune. This is a small complaint and one that is easily forgiven; overall, the women are a perky reinforcement in songs that might otherwise be lost to wallowing and dirt kicking.
The lyrics on Your Heart Not Mine aren't anything we haven't heard before: drinking too much, loving too hard and trying to get life right. It's everything you'd expect from a band that has no qualms branding itself as an Americana act. To that end, My Oh My accomplishes everything it sets out to do in creating a feel-good, alt-country album that evokes the sepia-toned summers of the 1970s, and there's nothing wrong with that. Don't we often wish for times past? And My Oh My hands them over with a reassuring smile.
- Natalie Gallagher