Crashes range from 14″ to 21″ and many are available in either medium thin or thin. Ride are available in 20″ to 24″ diameters, in light and medium weights.
If you like the sound of the hand made cymbals from the ’50s and ’60s, then the Classic series might just be the cymbals for you.
Hand crafted in Turkey to Heartbeat’s specifications, the Classic series features a full range of rides, crashes, hats, splashes, Chinas and effects. From early jazz drummers and to the latest musical trends, the name Classic says it all! In a day like today when most cymbals made are pumped out by machines, the Classic series exemplifies the craftsmanship of yesterday, but with a sound for today! The concept of these fully lathed cymbals has been proven over and over again through the years. “We laugh and drink and eat,” D’Agostino sings, “but we’re all just wishing you were here.” It’s not quite a happy ending, but it’s a fitting final anecdote for an album that so movingly testifies to the difficulty of appreciating what you have while still reconciling what you’ve lost.Classic cymbals from Heartbeat bring back the sound of original Turkish made cymbals. That prospect might have thrown him into fits just an album ago, but here things go about as well as you could hope, given the circumstances. On the closer “Shrine,” D’Agostino confronts it head on, testing his progress by joining the family of his deceased friend for a meal commemorating his birthday. It does get better over time, maybe even better than you could have hoped, yet you can never be certain that it isn’t still there, hiding dormant somewhere in your chest, waiting to throw off your heartbeat at the least expected moment. The terrible thing about anxiety, as anybody who’s ever suffered it can attest, is that there’s no permanent fix for it.
So D’Agostino still has some things to work through, even if he’s come a long way from the days of hyperventilating at the prospect of dirty hypodermic needles hidden in movie theater seat cushions. On “Well,” bright Duran Duran synths soften the blow of D’Agostino’s harrowing confession: “Think I need help/Wanna get well.” Pretty Years’ colorful arrangements keep the mood light even when the subject matter is anything but. Jubilant E Street Band saxophones cut against D’Agostino’s voice on “Wish,” while the pumping “4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)” charges forward with the pageantry and sparkle of a lost Sandinista! gem. With the help of producer John Congleton, who continues his remarkable streak of bringing out the best in nearly every act he works with, the band nods to some of the wilder arrangements of ’80s pop-rock records like Born in the U.S.A., Brothers in Arms, and Head on the Door. He really is in love.Įvery Cymbals Eat Guitars album has been dense, but none have covered as much ground as effectively as Pretty Years. “Can’t believe the shit that we were promised really might exist,” he marvels on “Have a Heart,” but it takes the song’s twinkling, Johnny Marr-esque guitars to confirm that, no, he’s not being sarcastic. His rasp imparts even his sweetest sentiments with a crotchety sting. “It's as much of a declaration of love as I’ll ever muster,” he trills on “Close.” He’s trying to channel Robert Smith’s heavenly sigh, but his words don’t soar the way Smith’s do. He spent much of Cymbals Eat Guitars’ grief-sick last album processing the death of a close friend, so even as he looks to better days here, he remains guarded and deeply skeptical of any good fortune. Despite the comparatively upbeat outlook of these songs-a shift that’s underscored by the album’s jaunty tempos-words of comfort don’t come naturally to singer Joseph D’Agostino.
Some of those leaders of emo’s fourth wave have gone so far as to cast their music as a kind of support group, recording albums that double as manuals for coping with hardship. Like recent works from The Hotelier and Sorority Noise, it’s about nothing less than the intrinsic value of being alive. The band spent the two brief years between LOSE and their fourth album Pretty Years on the road with acts like Say Anything, Brand New, and Modern Baseball, so it may not be entirely a coincidence that Pretty Years, while holding true to its own distinctive aesthetic vision, confronts the same vital concerns that have made the best albums from emo’s modern crop resonate so deeply.
The emo revival has created a home for loud, openhearted guitar rock that skirts conventional notions of “cool,” and although Cymbals Eat Guitars aren’t by any means a complete match for that scene, circumstances have aligned the two. But perhaps timing could work in their favor again. And so now a band that once stumbled into an audience now finds themselves scraping for one, a cruel reversal of fortunes for a group that’s making the best music of their career.