Kiril's CD of the Week: Heartless Bastards

Official album art, courtesy of Wikipedia

First off, I have to apologize for my absence. Sorry guys. I've been deathly busy these past three weeks, that I haven't had an ounce of free time. There is a lot of backed up music sitting on my desktop as I write. So for those of you that haven't completely lost faith in me, I have some good news. Due to this extensive backlog, I will be doing Album of the Day features for this week. Yes, that's right, I will have five albums, starting today.

I don't think that there is much I can say about Heartless Bastards that their music doesn't say for itself. This is exactly the kind of band that the term Rock 'n' Roll was invented for. I can concatenate words like electric-folk-blues-rock, but it wouldn't mean that much when speaking about this band. Even though this band formed in 2003 (formally anyway) as a garage band in Cincinnati, they play the kind of Rock 'n' Roll that we haven't heard since the late 1970's.

I found this band late at night--as usual--clicking on random videos on YouTube. The one that caught my ear the acoustic WNRN version of this album's title track, "The Mountain"; I was immediately lost in Erika Wennerstrom's unique howl of a voice. However, these quiet unplugged tracks left me wondering about the band name, so I ventured into the studio tracks, and I have to say, I feel in love with the band all over again. The full band electric tracks are a whole different animal, unleashing images of buss tours and dim stages; of closing your eyes and getting lost in the beat of the music.