A bit of a guilty pleasure. Unlike Everyday
Robots, I suspect this won’t make many other people’s albums of the year
lists. Yes, Taylor Momsen (front woman
and co-writer) used to be an actor on Gossip Girl (which I’ve never seen, but
am assured is awful), and the ‘cool’ rock press seemingly don’t like that fact,
but I’m way too old to care all that much what is cool anymore. The
Pretty Reckless are not exactly spectacularly original, but as mainstream
rock records go, this has got pretty much all that one could ask for. The riffs are absolutely great throughout
(thanks to guitarist Ben Phillips), and Momsen’s voice has range and a nice
grungy tinge. My favourite track is undoubtedly
‘Sweet Things’, which sounds almost Badmotorfinger-y
in the verse and then undercuts itself with a creepy little acoustic
chorus. But there are at least half a
dozen really brilliant rock songs here, and a number of other pretty good ones,
which is a fairly good hit rate. Things
are augmented nicely on the deluxe edition that I have by bonus acoustic
versions of some of the tracks, which shows how good the song writing is here (cause
they all still sound great even after being stripped of their bells and whistles). ‘Sweet Things’, again, is the pick of the
unplugged bunch. Lots to recommend it: I
would certainly have liked the Foo
Fighters record to have been this good…
sample
track: Sweet Things