Image via Sweet Unknown Records
A Beautiful Life By Heartless Bastards
A Beautiful Life by Heartless Bastards
Erika Wennerstrom can sing as though she has nothing to prove as a singer, and in a sense she’s right: the Heartless Bastards’ frontwoman has one of the warmest, richest, most maturely developed voices in rock ‘n’ roll.
Her voice retains those qualities on the sixth Heartless Bastards album, A Beautiful Life, as it did on her most recent LP, the solo 2018 work Sweet Unknown, but she still wants to prove that she has important things to tell us, and that her chosen form of musical expression is hotter than its commercially fading embers.
At first, those important things feel quaint, because they come almost uncut from the Age of Aquarius: the first two tracks, “Revolution” and “How Low,” deplore greed and implore us to “help each other out,” while the final track, “The Thinker,” actually quotes the Beatles with “Love is all you need.”
Then again, Wennerstrom’s messages aren’t wrong, no matter how old they are, and she combines them with some of the most vigorous music of her creative life, along with other players—such as regular Bastards bassist Jesse Ebaugh, Okkervil River guitarist Lauren Gurgiolo, and My Morning Jacket keyboardist Bo Koster—who can match her vigor.
This is some of her most varied music, too, whether she’s combining light orchestration and European-folk guitar into Buddy Holly balladry on “You Never Know”; waltzing with melodic grandeur and lyrical humility in “Dust”; or flowing into the Middle Eastern mystic with Andrew Bird’s soaring violin and Fared Shafinury’s amazing sitar on “The River.”
Wennerstrom sings through everything gracefully, lovingly and intently, and there’s never any question that she believes her words. If intelligent, open-minded rock music fades from the cultural mainstream, it won’t be the fault of Heartless Bastards, and Wennerstrom can be proud that she’s put all her power behind peace, love, and understanding.
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