Blues belter Beth Hart blazes back with a fine, fine new album full of strong songs, guest stars, passion, emotion and powerful, potent atmosphere.
Hart always seems to have decadence and danger about her, grit yet fragility, but she is also pure class, and is on top vocal form for this latest collection.
You Still Got Me – the 11th solo studio album for the girl from L.A. – offers more than “just” Blues, with elements of jazz, soul, country and cabaret klezmer (see the song, Never Underestimate A Gal).
Blistering opening track Savior With A Razor has a wonderful, controlled, rolling momentum and some tasty licks courtesy of guest axeman, cat in the hat Slash (fresh from his own recent Blues album, Orgy Of The Damned, on which Hart appeared).
Beth snarls and sneers some spicy lyrics: “Dig my bad bones out the trash/ Sell my sick soul, keep the cash/ Kiss the preacher, kiss my ass/ I’m a rager/ Like a savior/ With a razor … I’m takin the devil down …” Elsewhere on the record there is much talk of cigarettes, hard liquor, fast cars, guns, dreams, love and wild cherries.
The star girl, a good ol’ pal of Joe Bonamassa, of course, clearly works well with ace geetarists as, following Slash’s effort, Eric Gales turns up to great effect on the groovy, funky Suga N My Bowl. Other album highlights include the swoony, dreamy, trumpety Drunk On Valentine, then the rollicking, countrified tribute Wanna Be Big Bad Johnny Cash – recalling Rodney Crowell’s great Cash homage, I Walk The Line (Revisited).
Among several ballads there are two real stand-outs – the superb title track, a love song if ever there was one, and the inspiring Wonderful World, keeping the bar high and emotions higher, Beth’s voice strong, sinuous, seriously sultry.
Little Heartbreak Girl, boasting nice piano, a real sense of songwriting authority and a Kenny Chesney vibe, is another quality number that makes an impact, while the dramatic heartbeat of Don’t Call The Police viscerally tackles the tragic George Floyd powder keg and ongoing aftermath, fired up by a superior Randy Flowers guitar solo.
The brooding Pimp Like That keeps it real, packed with in-your-face attitude, risky character and an all-round, heart-in-the-mouth, daredevil modus operandi, before Machine Gun Vibrato winds things up – a splendid drum track, riffy guitars, raunchy rhythm and more of that special, unmistakeable Hart.
At her wailing, woesome, awesome best, she taps into the raw essence of the Blues, back to a primitive, primordial, pre-recorded swamp of influences, iterations and interpretations where country, rock ’n’ roll and much of the rest of it intertwine, driven by what Nick Tosches once defined as that “deep magic and slow, hard, grave-digging rhythm”. You know, music that goes “way back”?
In the beginning was the word. Beth? You still got it.
You Still Got Me, by Beth Hart, is out on Friday (October 25), from Provogue / Mascot Label Group