Love songs come and go, but a good breakup song will jam its fist into your chest and squeeze the life right outta you. The Mendoza Line's 30 Year Low mini-album marks the end of band mates Tim Bracy and Shannon McArdle's marriage and artistic collaboration (Tim is stickin' it out as the band's main-man while Shannon will go on to other projects). What we're left with is eight new songs so gut-wrenchingly personal you can't help but be swept up in the bitter heartsickness.
As a follow up to the critically acclaimed 2003 release Full of Light and Full of Fire (Pop Matters declared it "one of the best albums of the decade") the new album is a crowded, brutal, witty, authentic, a vigorous mess of history and hurt feelings, a vivid and contradictory document of life at the edge of 30, and the death of love for two beaten-down and tangled-up souls. Released along with the mini-album is the 18 track bonus disc The Final Remarks of the Legendary Malcontent which draws inspiration from the sort of cut and paste bootleg albums that the band grew up on. Culled from live tracks, radio programs, rehearsal takes, covers, and demos, The Final Remarks is a warts and all omnibus which nevertheless reveals the poignant alchemy of this vibrant collaboration (includes covers of Springsteen, Dylan, R. Thompson and more). Eight albums and ten years into their career, 2007 and this new double CD sees The Mendoza Line becoming something new, strengthened by loss and tumult and age. What comes next should be downright revelatory.