Darker than almost anything that’s come before, The Pretty Reckless’ fifth album digs to the heart of misery and spins some of their best songs yet from it
Depression. Substance abuse. Grief. The dark clouds have never hung as low over The Pretty Reckless’ music as they have now, on their first album in five years. The flipside of this, however, is that there’s more for Taylor Momsen to excavate and the music is all the better for it. She’s left herself no corners in which to hide, and by chipping away at the varnish and glamour of some of their previous songwriting, she’s accessed a deeper truth.
Sparing nothing and no-one, they plunge straight in with a litany of gut punch-worthy songs as soon as the needle is dropped. The steely For I Am Death is a sinister portrait of dysfunction with the Grim Reaper’s shadow hanging over it, while When I Wake Up screeches from breezy, freewheeling recklessness into breathless reckonings. ‘When I wake up, I don’t know where I was last night.’
The real showstoppers come slightly later. The emotion at the cracked heart of Love Me is so simple it’s almost primal, but it doesn’t diminish the anguish. ‘My body is all that I’m worth… why doesn’t anyone love me? / I just need someone to want me.’ Meanwhile, the title-track is a howled prayer of a song with a stunning vocal performance from Taylor that travels bloodstream-deep, but it’s the smouldering Dragonfire that’s an unexpected stroke of brilliance, its rhythmic, shifting acoustic guitar chords adding a genuine freshness.
Somewhere, the light gets switched back on. About You brings an injection of defiance, as does Spell On You’s witchy albeit slightly over-cheesy revenge fantasy with its lines about magic wands, potions and voodoo dolls. Then it flickers off again, with brief dives into state-of-the-world despair on Eye Of The Storm: ‘Everything has gone to Hell / The rich get rich and the poor get well / Nothing at all,’ and the grungy Dark Days, which marks a heavy-hearted, world-weary trudge to the exit.
Though The Pretty Reckless have swirled in plenty of gloom to their songcraft, they’ve broken a new frontier for themselves. The new swell of excitement building around them has happened for a reason. This is some of their best work to date.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Halestorm, The Warning, AC/DC
Dear God is released on June 26 via Fearless
