album review: Jmag #28 May 2009

the mountain by heartless bastards

Erika Wennestrom has a voice like gravy—rich, thick and rendered from fluid meat fat. Obviously this is ideal for her purposes, i.e. lo-fi blues rock, yet she resoundingly fails to set my tits on fire by her apparent refusal to emotionally lose control. Why, I don’t know, that’s a question for her therapist and possibly mine, but the fact remains—her absence of unbridled vocal passion basically makes her the old man in Beyond the Law, who tells Charlie Sheen some fucked-up story about sending him down a hole, but never actually does anything; he just hangs out. Meanwhile, Sheen loses his emotional shit and beats up a cop. You gave me old man, Wennestrom; I wanted Sheen.

Album contains occasional violin, mandolin, banjo. These are to this album what children are the world—adorable but pointless. Violin seems unable to die at one point, much like a campus hippy telling you how cats rule the planet—it’s like, I don’t hate you, I respect your right to life, but I have other shit to do before I die, and I haven’t eaten or pissed in eight hours, GET TO THE POINT. Good make-out music.