Beth Hart
Bang Bang Boom Boom

Our Beth is a true rockeuse, one of the most interesting female voices in the contemporary American rock-blues scene, and this 2012 album Bang Bang Boom Boom is mature and captivating.

Eleven tracks all penned by her that revisit the classic themes of the more intimate blues, the kind revolving around love's torments that are never without pain. A couple of examples to cite, "The man is like a drug / Humiliating / And I can’t get enough" in the opening «Baddest Blues» and later "Every time he walks out the door / I wonder if he’s ever coming back / But I can’t help but love" in «Caught Out In The Rain».

Simple and direct lyrics that match well with her vocal abilities and her performing grit. There is often a vein of melancholy, but this doesn't make it a sad or depressive album; on the contrary, the title track – with its almost pugilistic rhythmic drive – brings us back to a fun love skirmish ("You are the sticks / And I am the stones") that always ends in an embrace. And so on, singing with a powerful and flexible voice in the tradition of female artists that starts with Janis Joplin and stretches to the white rock girls of her generation (I'd put her alongside Susan Tedeschi and Melissa Etheridge, without venturing into the younger ones I don't know enough about).

In the background, there is of course an echo of R&B (let's say Aretha Franklin like Etta James) and in certain mid-tempo beats (the intro of «Baddest Blues») I even noticed a slight Billie Holiday nuance, but I apologize if I've probably exaggerated. Among my favorites, the pounding «Better Man» and also «Thru The Window Of My Mind» which has its own evocative emphasis.

Sure, it's not a perfect album: there's a quasi-gospel track like «Spirit Of God» that isn't quite her style, and there's a rather conventional tear-jerker blues like «There In Your Heart» where even Joe Bonamassa's guitar ends up just making a cameo...it doesn't tug at our hearts. Small matters: if there's a real flaw, it's rather in the graphic part, where I don't know what came to Beth Hart's mind dressing as a revue femme fatale. But who cares, the substance of the music prevails over the image, and this is a great album that certainly didn't make me regret the expense.