“Pardon me. Pardon me!” A small blonde woman holding a guitar has emerged from the throng in the Borderline, standing directly to my right. She patiently repeats herself – politely but louder – until I hear her above the noise of the packed venue and get out of the way. Only as she stumbles onto the stage, moments later, does it become clear she is Erika Wennerstrom, lead singer of Ohio country/blues rock outfit the Heartless Bastards.
Wennerstrom, like her band, is winningly unassuming. She greets the audience with an “oops!”, laughing while trying to adjust her mic stand. The pounding stop-start rhythm of Got To Have Rock And Roll kicks in and Wennerstrom’s rootsy treble undulates over the pumping hook, before it all coalesces into a flowing chorus of sustained guitar chords and gorgeously plangent vocals.
Black Cloud is a standout from the new album. It builds to a rattling climax with Wennerstrom really unleashing her voice towards the end of the middle eight – suddenly the idea of not being able to hear her as she stands right next to you seems unthinkable. She hits a volume and pitch that while high is always dulcet, never shrill, yet so robust it made the middle of my head vibrate and without a word of exaggeration induced dizziness.
The tempo drops for the gentler strains of The Fool and Pocket Full Of Thirst, the latter deepened by Mark Nathan’s sweetly vibrato guitar line. Into The Light follows, a charmingly upbeat song built on a tinkling piano line, gleefully juxtaposed with heavier stabs of drums and guitars.
Down In The Canyon, however, is the jewel in the crown; a seven-minute epic opening with a slow, meaty riff worthy of Black Sabbath, stripped back almost immediately to a sparse bassline and drum beat punctuated by desert-evoking twangs of guitar. It grows into a lush soundscape of dissonant guitar chords, giving way to a bright, fragile melody, before finally plunging back into the sublimely dark hook. Wennerstrom’s voice is awe-inspiringly mournful throughout.
There is no pause for an audience eager to applaud – they dive straight into another song, and only after this are the crowd permitted to cheer. They do, extensively, the joke becoming that they refuse to stop, a protracted series of whoops reducing Wennerstrom to embarrassed, modest laughter. This is the beauty of the Heartless Bastards: they are playing for their own enjoyment as much as anyone else’s – passionately and without pretence.