Heart Go Home On Fanactic

I don’t know which is harder to believe: the fact that it’s been 37 years since Heart’s debut album Dreamboat Annie was released or the fact that they still manage to put out amazing material today. Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart are at a point in their career where they don’t necessarily need to put out new music, but they want to. The commercial success enjoyed in the late 70s and again in the late 80s may not be there, but these talented ladies are at a much more rewarding point in their long career. They are doing things their way and they haven’t sounded happier.

Heart’s new album Fanatic is the follow-up to 2010’s Red Velvet Car, their first Top 10 album in 20 years. That album was also praised highly by both fans and critics. Fanatic has the Wilson sisters cranking up the amps and rocking a bit harder than they did on their last album. There are also some new elements being incorporated into their music 

added yet another layer of complexity to these talented ladies.

The album opens with the title track and its distorted riff intro lets you know that this is going to be interesting. This is a killer track with its psychedelic feel and crunchy guitar tone. “Dear Old America” tells the tale of a father returning home from war. An interesting note about the song found in the album’s liner notes. The tempo switches to double time midway through the song. It seems that this happened accidentally due to a computer tempo error, but the band liked it and kept it that way.

“A Million Miles Away” is a very interesting song with its incorporation of electronic beats and elements not usually found on a Heart album. The ladies kick it old school in the Zepplinesque “Mashallah!” which is amazing. The addition of a string section in the song just takes elevates this rocking number to another level. What’s that? You need some more rock from the Wilson sisters? Well, there’s also “59 Crunch” and it won’t disappoint.

“Pennsylvania” brings us our first ballad with a bit of a rock edge. A haunting song lyrically and the guitar tone adds such an element to the song to compliment Ann’s amazing vocal delivery. On a gentler note, “Rock Deep (Vancouver)” is a beautiful, gentle ballad and brings to mind “Dog and Butterfly” with its peaceful acoustic side. Again, the use of strings on this song gets a major thumbs up. It’s an absolutely gorgeous song. It’s amazing how the Wilson sisters can tell a story in three and a half minutes.

Overall, I don’t think there’s a bad song on here. You know how a band will put out an album and there are one or two tracks that just seem to feel like “filler” in order to make it a full album? You really don’t get that feel on Fanatic. Ann and Nancy definitely rock out on it, but they also manage to keep in touch with their folk roots as well. The guitars are loud and crunchy and distorted at times, but they always rock. I mentioned it before, but I will again. The strings used throughout this album add such a great element to the songs. What a great touch!

Ann Wilson, does this woman just keep getting better with age? She is definitely one of the most amazing voices ever in music and at times probably one of the most underappreciated as I don’t think she has ever gotten the credit she truly deserves. Nancy is no slouch either, but even though she knows how to rock, her vocals add such a tender element to compliment Ann’s voice. Their harmonies are top notch. So many young artists today should pay attention to these ladies and take note on how true talent can manage to keep a career going strong after almost 40 years.  

Heart; More Substance Than Style This Go Around

Church came early for me this week with the combination of a run-in with an old friend and the act of spontaneity. It was a muggy Saturday and my afternoon was free. I had read online that the legendary band Heart was playing a very small, intimate amphitheatre in Raleigh, NC. Although we had no tickets, we decided to take our chance by driving down and seeing who may extra tickets for sale in the parking lot.

Sure enough, standing right by the entrance gate was a woman holding up tickets that she needed to unload. We purchased them for the very low price of only $10 each and entered. I should have known right then that it was going to be a very special evening. The opening act was a new male vocalist by the name of Erick Baker who took the stage all alone and very vulnerable with only his acoustic guitar and the mic. His voice, very similar in vein to David Grey (reference provided from a friend) was amazing and he definitely poured his heart into each song. At one point, I remember hearing him and thinking that the song sounded very familiar. He was doing an slowed down, acoustic version of the Beastie Boys “You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party”, which he managed to pull off and make it work. Just a quick side note, please look into this artist for he is a very talented guy on the verge of a major break.

The sky started to fade to night and the air started to cool and the setting was great for an outdoor concert. Heart hit the stage about 9:00 and it did not take long to see that these ladies are truly the real deal. In a age of “here today, gone today” flavors of the week in the music industry, it’s always rewarding to see an act like Heart. The Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy for those not in the know, have been rocking out for over thirty years and still do not get the respect that they truly deserve.

Ann kept the banter between songs very short, acknowledging that there was a lot of history to cover and for the crowd to have a goodtime and enjoy the evening. The arrangements on some of the hits that they have been playing for years were toyed with just a little bit to give the songs a fresh interpretation. Their big hit from the eighties “These Dreams” showcased Nancy on mandolin which was a great artistic move on the her part. It really added to the structure of the song and made it, in my opinion, even better than the original version.

The band is actually touring this summer to support their new CD, “Red Velvet Car” and they played three tracks from it that night including the texting friendly appropriate song called “WTF”, which was actually a good little rocking tune. The band continued to mix up the classic hits from the seventies and the hits from their big, yet brief heyday in the eighties. Ann’s version of “Alone” was stripped down to an almost keyboard only performance that really showed why her voice is one that the most underappreciated voices in the history of music. How many times can you say that you have gone to a concert and that the singer’s vocals sounded even better live than on the CD itself? Ann’s voice live has that pure, raw emotion feel to it that gets stripped away during production in a studio.

All the seventies classics seem to have been spotlighted including the rocking “Barracuda” , “Straight On” and “Magic Man”. A very cool little “mash-up” was their classic “Even It Up” mixed with the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter” which sounded amazing. A personal highlight for me was my favorite of their classic seventies hits “Dog And Butterfly” on which Ann can do no wrong. Such a beautiful song on which Ann’s connection with the lyrical content is an element lacking in so many singers today.

Heart fans know that the band is notorious live for doing some amazing covers of classic songs from bands that they are fans of. A prime example being the solid cover of Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”. Well, the girls may have just topped themselves with the encore played this particular night. The two song encore started with a wicked cover of Zeppelin’s “What Is And What Should Never Be”.

What was about to happen next is one of those events that you feel honored to have experienced. At that point, we were taken to church by the Wilson sisters as they graced the crowd with a cover of the Who classic “Love Reign O’er Me”. Now, I am a Who fan and had even talked on Face Book with a fellow writer about the exact same song earlier in the day. To add to the irony of it all is the fact that I was even wearing a Who shirt that evening! What proceeded to happen over the next six minutes was nothing short of spiritual. The power of Ann’s voice delivering the poetic words of Pete Townsend’s masterpiece from Quadrophenia. That, combined with the superb musicianship supplied by the band, created one of the strongest musical moments that I think I have ever witnessed live.

Overall, the show was nothing short of a stellar display of pure talent. Artists like Ann and Nancy Wilson are rare in today’s music scene. True, back in the eighties, they did get caught up in that “packaged” artist machine that pushed style over substance, but it didn’t take them long to come to their senses and get back to what it was all about…the music. Did they play all the hits that night in Raleigh? No, quite a few of their big ones were left out, but just about everyone there walked away with a feeling of satisfaction and definitely getting their moneys worth. In today’s recession, that just doesn’t happen too many times.