Review Summary: Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
Heartless Bastards play a brand of blues-rock that sounds like it’s naturally endemic to the band’s home of Ohio. Where a band like the Black Keys takes its straightforward simplicity from the hardworking ethos of the Rust Belt, Heartless Bastards’ sound is more elemental, not so much the sweat of the people as the actual corroding rust itself, heavy and implacable. That sound translated better on the band’s mid-00s offerings than latter, more contemplative efforts, but with
Restless Ones the band has kept the same lineup together since 2012’s
Arrow, the first time this has happened since 2006. When I saw them at Atlanta’s Shaky Knees music festival this year, the comfort level between the quartet was apparent, a finely taut mishmash of grudging Americana and wrenching roots rock that seemed to pull its soul right out of a parched and battered earth.
Restless Ones can’t quite translate their live show to record (2005’s
Stairs and Elevators remains the high water mark for that), but it does perhaps the best job yet of mediating between the band’s ragged past and its veteran road warrior present.
That starts and ends, of course, with singer and guitarist Erika Wennerstrom, whose vocals ring out clearer here than they have in years. Wennerstrom was always the beating heart and soul of this band – while her thunderous voice takes some getting used to for a few listeners, no singer in rock has a muscle car for a voice like she does, rumbling over lower notes and exploding into a torn, melancholy higher register like a particularly well worn trail. On a song like the propulsive “Hi-Line,” it’s her adroit mix of world-weariness and a tinge of hopefulness that transforms rote alt-country into a love letter. “Into That Light” is another rarity, a jaunty tune bolstered by bursts of dizzying riffs and Wennerstrom’s downright lovely delivery, her lyric “you make the colors brighter” shifting subtly higher and hopeful, an open glimpse into a heart usually coarsened and rough. Where her support often got lost in trekking through long and meandering roads on past records,
Restless Ones gives Wennerstrom the immediacy her voice craves without hammering the point too bluntly. “Wind Up Bird” is a crashing, immense good time, all shades of Led Zeppelin and guitar riffs that crack open like canyons, yet it’s followed by “Gates of Dawn,” a red-blooded pop anthem in the guise of a folk song, and “Black Cloud,” a vital hit of crisp, old-fashioned syncopation.
This delicate calibration is what puts
Restless Ones over most of Heartless Bastards’ catalog, and its missteps perhaps more glaring. “Journey” is riveting alt-country that sounds like the arena rock staple of a much bigger band, but even Wennerstrom’s sinewy voice can’t rescue a clichéd set of lyrics and dueling guitars that clash rather than soar. Closer “Tristessa” totally veers off message, drowning in uncharacteristic effects and a languid performance from Wennerstrom that aims for hypnotic and hits soporific instead. It’s easy to spot these occasional flaws, though, because the album as a whole succeeds as a showcase of a band at the peak of their capabilities, imbuing itself with an uncommon sense of purpose and a very real, very tangible sense of atmosphere and mood. When I listen to Heartless Bastards, I hear wind and mud and a singular voice that trudges powerfully through. “Disguised myself as someone else / so you could not break me,” Wennerstrom sings on “Pocket Full of Thirst,” a fearless tenacity worn deep into her voice.
Restless Ones and Heartless Bastards continue to follow the path of its leader, frayed and tattered but surging forward nonetheless, a bit worse for the wear but never down, never broken. What’s more heartland America than that?
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