A Loud Heart is the pairing of Minneapolis emcee Guante with singer-songwriter Claire Taubenhaus. They also bring in upright bass and cello on a couple of their songs. When done well, a project in this style can be really moving, but when done poorly can come across as the most ridiculously pretentious and self-righteous coffee house music. Unfortunately, A Loud Heart is the latter.

Taubenhaus is a good singer-songwriter, and she’s got a strong voice, but she doesn’t really get the chance to shine or do anything interesting on this EP. Instead, she’s pushed to the background, only strumming the guitar and sing hooks for Guante. When venturing into the territory of “acoustic hip hop,” there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid. There’s no big beat to hide behind, so the lyrics and delivery really have to be on point. However, you also need to come up with some interesting arrangements or instrumentations, otherwise songs will start to bleed together. And those are the biggest problems with this EP. After listening to it several times, I still can’t separate songs in my head, since they all have the same formula: strumming guitar, pretty hook sung by Taubenhaus, and ridiculously self-important lyrics by Guante. I knew we were off to a bad start as the opening song, “Just a Song,” began to play out, as Guante spells out what makes a good song, which I have all sorts of problems with. First off, show, don’t tell - in this case, it’s a major failure, since this song bores the hell out of me. Second, you’re insulting your audience’s intelligence by assuming they don’t already know that songs can be moving. Third, by Guante’s count, things that shouldn’t be discussed in songs include the weather, breakups, being broke, being unsure of your future, and sports. This is an incredibly bold statement coming from someone delivering a song about what makes songs good, but really he’s just shooting himself in the foot, since a) brilliant songs have been written about all these subjects, and b) his song doesn’t move me or connect on a deep level whatsoever, so I can’t take his thesis seriously. Things never get better from there, and the blame really rests on Guante’s shoulders. He is incredibly pretentious, and he’s consistently insulting his potential audience’s intelligence. The EP isn’t that long, and yet Guante was able to simultaneously bore me and insult me, putting me off from their music.

Just because you’re from Minneapolis doesn’t mean your hip hop is automatically good, and teaming with a singer-songwriter doesn’t automatically make you more interesting. This short collection of uninspired, self-righteous hip hop is not worth your time.