Music Review: Heartless Bastards - The Mountain
9.0 / 10. New Album is Among the Year's Best, Wennerstrom Dazzles
Apr 8, 2009
Heartless Bastards are the type of band that America needs more of.
They’re a band with a badass name from a large Midwestern city that plays a style of music that is reminiscent of a long-ago glory of past incarnations of rock greatness fused with modern-day sensibilities and an attitude all their own. Part Black Keys, part Stillwater; with the twist of a bombastic female rock singer up front.
From Cincy to Bonnaroo
Heartless Bastards were discovered by Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney at a bar in his home city of Akron, Ohio, not far from lead guitarist, vocalist and chief songwriter Erica Wennerstrom’s hometown of Dayton. Other than Wennerstrom, the rest of the band has included a rotating cast of Dayton and Cincinnati area musicians, which now consists of bassist Jesse Ebaugh and drummer Dave Colvin, who are on tour in support of “The Mountain,” the band’s third full-length release on Fat Possum Records.
Wennerstrom commands the majority of the attention in the band, not only because rock guys are always infatuated with girl rockers, but because her booming rock voice has the ability to fill arenas or echo through the night sky of a summer festival. The woman is a tried and true rock singer.
The summer festivals will be around the corner, as Heartless Bastards will be playing at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee and the All Points West Festival at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. But first the band recently landed a prime spot during the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas playing the opening act at legendary Stubb’s Bar-B-Q for the debut of the Decemberists’ “Hazards of Love,” which were both broadcast on NPR’s All Songs Considered.
A Powerful Rock ‘n’ Roll Breakthrough
With the band following the 21st Century road map to the proverbial “top,” it’s nice to know that they’re trying to pave their way on the heels of a fantastic album, and “The Mountain” is just that.
The band starts off the album full force with a crunchy blues riff and the wail of a pedal-steel guitar on the album’s title track and first single. Wennerstrom’s vocals move with the ebb and flow of the heavy-not-hard classic rock song until her vocals burst through to carry the song into a climactic bridge and the song’s final chorus and subsequent pedal steel vs. electric guitar solo. Truth is, “The Mountain” flat out rocks.
Yet the band follows it up with “Be So Happy,” a stripped down, acoustic-and-vocals folk song with simple and poetic lyrics that “long to be out in the great unknown.”
Here they express a familiar theme in rock ‘n’ roll history, longing to find freedom and happiness in uncertain times in an uncertain world. Later, Wennerstrom brings this mindset to perhaps the album’s best straightforward rock track, “Out At Sea,” where she finds herself out at sea with no control of her surroundings, “floating away.”
But the album is far from straightforward rock, with songs like “Had To Go,” a cryptic ballad with violins and mandolins, “Sway,” the album’s bouncy 70’s rock closing track and album highlight “Hold Your Head High,” slow-burning ballad with masterful lyrics about breaking out of your shell and taking on the world with head held high.
Bottom Line on “The Mountain”
The bottom line is that “The Mountain” has quickly emerged as one of the year’s top albums, and rightfully so. With a nationwide tour with The Gaslight Anthem already in the works and a possible breakthrough summer right around the corner, this is a band that demands the attention of the music industry as well as the earbuds of the 21st Century rock ‘n’ roll audience.
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