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All This Time

by

Heartless Bastards

 
All This Time
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Avg: 4.0 (350 ratings)

  • We Say...

    Review by J. Edward Keyes

    Cincinnati trio discovers the power of turning down
    Erika Wennerstrom lead off the Heartless Bastards' debut by howling "I'm gonna take everything! Everything!" — and the desperation and agony in her ragged alto made that sentiment easy to believe. While other bands served up plastic-scuzz new-garage templates, the Bastards had a tangible current of urgency that made their songs feel both more dire and more dangerous, not just Nuggets-by-numbers. As good as that record was, though, it spent far too much time running in the red — all that thrash and howl can wear a person out, and too much bludgeoning can desensitize instead of inspire.

    Which is why All This Time is stronger and more engaging: the Bastards have tightened and tied down all that rage; instead of scraping and thrashing, the songs have an insistent slow burn. (What was that old saw about implication over explication?) There's more danger in the murky sway of "Valley of Debris" than there was in any of the debut's raw vitriol. Rather than attacking outright, the songs tug and surge, creating a consistent feeling of unease.

    Wennerstrom's still got a violent voice, but she exploits its crags and cracks more, teasing out verses instead of simply bellowing. Witness how she ratchets up the energy syllable-by-syllable in the line "I've got no mo-ti-va-TION" in "Blue Day," or how she skips across the lyric in the title track. She spends most of the record singing against the current: guitars wax and wane like turbulent tides, and Wennerstrom plays the part of the doomed human pushing in the other direction. "I swallowed a dragonfly in hopes that it would help me fly," she sings from behind a haze of guitars in the mantra-like "I Swallowed a Dragonfly." Her moment in the air was short-lived, but All This Time proves the Bastards are even more compelling wounded and grounded than they are when they're snarling and on the attack.

  • They Say...

    Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

    During some of the better moments of All This Time, the second album from Ohio's the Heartless Bastards, one gets the feeling that this trio could be the Midwestern cousin of PJ Harvey -- not Polly Harvey the singer and songwriter -- but the bone-shattering power trio named for the bandleader on Dry and Rid of Me. While frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom doesn't particularly sound like Polly, she conjures up a similar degree of gale-force vocal impact and plays a not-dissimilar variety of dirty, elemental electric guitar, while her rhythm section (Kevin Vaughn on drums and Mike Lamping on bass) calls up a massive Wall of Sound and energy behind her. But a few spins of All This Time makes it clear the similarity between the Heartless Bastards and PJ Harvey is a matter of similar musical philosophy rather than conscious emulation, and that Wennerstrom has a flinty, down-to-earth lyrical perspective that reflects the experiences of someone who was born and raised in Ohio (and still works a day job when not on the road). All This Time makes a powerful virtue of its muscular, no-frills production, and Brian Niesz's engineering, which allows the individual elements to stand out while still coalescing into a unified and gloriously dangerous whole. All This Time swings with the force of a heavyweight champ, but there's an unpretentious intelligence, compassion, and cautious hope in these ten songs, and the Heartless Bastards bring them across with an elegance that belies their muscle; they know how to say a great deal with a little, and that's a large part of what makes this album worth hearing.

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