Erika Wennerstrom marches her feet to a different drum, and that drum is lined with heartfelt emotion and a voice that could shake the rust from aged rafters. Her band the Heartless Bastards has given her a reason to break out of the rampant chains that the Ohio rock scene wraps around its musical talent like a noose just waiting to be tightened. Their inaugural effort Stairs and Elevators sends tear stained tremors and lust filled longing through the speakers in such a way that one can’t help but believe that while Wennerstrom rips through guitar strings and microphones and Mike Lamping matches his furiously linear bass parts to Kevin Vaughns off kilter yet sinister drum lines, the music that is being created is not just catchy, but brutally honest and meaningful as well.
From start to finish Stairs and Elevators, through the simplicity of bar chords and rhythm, controls its levels by crafting its songs around brilliantly structured guitar riffs and lyrics that are sung with such melodious excellence and brute force that the listener is both lulled into a sense of belonging and crooned into a feeling of emotional connection. This record is filled with pop hooks and sludge rock anthems that give you both three minute dreams (‘Gray’) and blues driven distortion fests (‘Done Got Old’) that not only work side by side, but fuse together to make a cohesive combination of bitter rivalry and open arms.
Recorded mostly in Newport, Kentucky and Water Valley, Mississippi, Stairs and Elevators finds this Cincinnati, Ohio based trio (who work day jobs still, but hopefully not for long) flexing their knowledge of where they’ve been (songs like ‘Onions’ and ‘New Resolution’ are such strange examples of late 70’s punk music that its hard to even call them homage’s) and where they think the music scene should be headed (‘Lazy’ grabs you by the throat with a repetitive guitar hook and then proceeds to slam you into the end of the album without dragging it out more than it needs to be).
Wennerstrom’s lyrics, however, are the secret to this mix. She’s just as self deprecating in ‘New Resolution’ (“my new resolution is to be/someone that does not care what anyone thinks of me/cuz’ I don’t even like myself half the time….”) as she is self empowering in ‘Onions’ (“and I was fine and then in time I could not see/ya’ll had me wrapped up in this mess so long til I broke free”) and you never get the sense through any of it that she is being insincere. Her willingness to speak from her soul and tease the melody of each song with the strength of her voice brings to the table an endless amount of possibilities. Vaughn, Lamping and Wennerstrom have tapped into the long forgotten rule of the blues that states that it doesn’t matter what you play, its how you play it and as Stairs and Elevators proves, the Heartless Bastards play it very, very well. |