Back to Socal from snowy NorCal at last. Found some killer road and snowboarding music. This rocker from Dayton named Erika Wennerstrom and her band the Heartless Bastards. She is mighty excellent. I chatted her up for Metromix recently. Turn it on.
A Heart-to-Heart With Heartless Bastards
It’s been a bumpy thrill ride ever since Erika Wennerstrom met Mike Lamping and formed Heartless Bastards in Dayton, Ohio in 2003. The Bastards dropped two critically acclaimed exercises in no-frills rock called Stairs and Elevators and All This Time, but things fell apart when Wennerstrom’s relationship with Lamping cratered and threw the band’s future into question. She soon found herself on the road to Texas, where she eventually settled with friends and family to clear her mind and start again.
The result? Probably the best work she’s ever done.
That personal turmoil has endowed Wennerstrom’s latest effort, The Mountain, with the kind of gravitas and raw emotion found in the finest work of like-minded souls like Neil Young and PJ Harvey. But she’s also looking outward as well, lamenting the loss of American jobs as much as her own love. And allthough she remains self-conscious about articulating her dissatisfaction with current events, she has become well-known for the catharsis her music inspires. Like her kindred Dayton spirit Kim Deal, Wennerstrom excels at complicating simplicity, a skill that should secure The Mountain a space atop 2009’s best efforts. MORE @ MORPHIZM
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