Heartless Bastards - Restless Ones

  by Adrian Janes

published: 12 / 8 / 2015

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Review

Crashing in with crazed slide guitar and smashed drums, ’Wind Up Bird’ loudly announces the fifth album from Heartless Bastards, before settling into a more reflective, sporadically waltz-time, mood. Erika Wennerstrom, the band’s songwriting fulcrum since they began in the early 2000s, sings like a countrified version of mature Patti Smith. The song ends much as it began, though by that point the slippery slide makes the introduction sound almost sedate. It would be hard to top such an opener, and in a way the band don’t try - its hard rock may be the foundation of their sound, but is by no means the whole edifice. So ‘Gates Of Dawn’ is Zeppelinesque, but only in the sense that it moves with equal skill from an acoustic introduction to electric onslaught. Its chorus is something else again, catchy and optimistic, but not with facile hope - Wennerstrom’s voice is of one who knows pain. Her unusual timbre is like a blend of modern America and Scandinavian heritage. ‘Hi-line’ and ‘The Fool’ venture into Americana and high quality 1970's pop-rock respectively, the former embellished with mandolin that recalls the gentler side of The Faces or REM, the latter’s treated guitar and harmonies making the style fresh rather than an exercise in nostalgia. Placed at the album’s centre, and certainly meriting that place, ‘The Journey’ is a mid-paced excursion under shining, shimmering guitar. The chorus (“Oh now/It’s suddenly clear/The journey’s the destination”) is a Byrdsian epiphany, like a satori on a rural Ohio road. ‘Pocket Full of Thirst’ shifts the mood again, Wennerstrom’s voice over sombre tom-toms pitched higher than usual to accentuate its plaintiveness, and graced by guitar with just enough ache in its tone to complement her singing and not overshadow it. Whereas most of ‘Restless Ones’ works within traditional song confines, closer ’Tristessa’ radically departs from this path, a drumless drone of grinding guitars derived from Wennerstrom’s home experimentation and her largely mournful voice, though at points she leaps into curious whoops and coos. If one can applaud the unwillingness to rest creatively, this trip into Noveller territory is probably one for a certain mood (I liked it the first time, felt puzzled the second). John Congleton, a prolific producer and engineer with artists as diverse as Swans, St. Vincent and the Black Angels, brings out the various shades of the band’s sound, centring proceedings around Wennerstrom’s voice but also giving the guitars and drums due prominence. The only time the drums have undue prominence is on the heavy rock of ‘Into the Light’, where their superbly crisp thwack excites the drummer into overplaying. The Heartless Bastards (the name apparently from a hilariously mistaken quiz answer for the name of Tom Petty’s band) have made an album that’s connected to music’s past but has enough conviction and imaginative blending of influences to create something for today. It would be an emotionally defective listener who couldn’t clutch at least some of these songs to their bosom.

Track Listing:-

1 Wind up Bird
2 Gates of Dawn
3 Black Cloud
4 Hi-Line
5 Journey
6 Pocket Full of Thirst
7 Into the Light
8 Into the Light
9 Eastern Wind
10 Tristessa

Band Links:-

https://twitter.com/heartlessbstrds
http://www.theheartlessbastards.com/
https://www.facebook.com/heartlessbast

Label Links:-

https://www.youtube.com/user/partisanr
https://instagram.com/partisanrecords/
https://twitter.com/partisanrecords
http://www.partisanrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/partisanrecor