Pop-Topia: Better Than Home album review
Via Pop-Topia.com:
Beth Hart
Better Than Home (4,5 /5)
Provogue Records – 2015
I have a long standing fandom for singer Beth Hart. Despite that fact, upon first listen to her new album Better Than Home I found myself feeling a little disappointed. I thought the pacing of the songs was a little bit too sedate for someone that I know can just rock out like nobody’s business when she wants to.
Let that be a lesson to anyone listening to a CD, to NOT judge an album by a first impression. Because once I listened to the album a few more times, I realized that I was being challenged as a music fan to really dig deep into what was being musically offered by Hart. And so I had to begin that digging wholeheartedly to learn that this album was actually quite a trip through the emotional landscape that is Hart’s music. Also, if you don’t immediately grasp what she is saying in each of the 11 tracks on the CD, the booklet is filled with a bio essay including explanations of each song.
The album opens with “Might As Well Smile”, a song that moves adroitly between mid and uptempo pursuits. I really liked the lyrical content of the song including this passage:
I go to the corner and buy me a drink
I say to the man
“This shit helps me think”
He says “Who Ya Fooling?
I know your type!!
A dead woman walking”
Maybe he’s right
I sure hope he ain’t right.
The song has the right vocal and instrumental hooks to grab you and not let go until that final note.
The movie Dead Man Walking is cited as the inspiration for the song “St. Teresa”. I liked the juxtaposition between the lyric “I was never good at confession” in the song and the knowledge that a large portion of Hart’s music has a huge confessional aspect to it.
One of the more interesting aspects of Hart’s musical palette is how she can write a song in the here and now and yet make it sound evocative of that old time music of say the 1930’s and 40’s. On this album, there are two songs that are representative of that in “Tell Her You Belong To Me” and “We’re Still Living In The City”. While the former had a powerful vocal performance from Hart, it really didn’t connect with me that much. As for the latter, a couple’s lifelong marriage and devotion to one another is a captivating tale to be sure and as I listened to it over and over, I found myself drawn into the song and the road being traveled both by the couple in the story and by Hart herself.
The song “Tell ‘Em To Hold On” just came out flat to these ears and did not improve despite a number of listening attempts.
The album closes on a real SLOOOOW note with the ballads “As Long As I Have A Song” and the bonus track “Mama This One’s For You”. The odd thing for me is that despite being more desirous of a kick in the pants tempo-wise, I actually liked Hart’s lyrics for “As Long As I Have A Song” as she expresses the back and forth battle she has with herself as a songwriter. And as I kept going back to the song, I realized that wanting the tempo increased would’ve actually hurt it. Hart’s smoky voice heightens the dramatic flavor to the proceedings as well:
Memories of melodies
And words that made me cry
They have all abandoned me
Sit back and watch me die
While “Mama This One’s For You” is a brutally honest and long delayed heartfelt expression of gratitude to Hart’s mother (while the album is dedicated to her father), I think I would’ve preferred more of a lively number to close things out, though I can certainly see and appreciate why it was sequenced as the last track on the album.
As for the individual songs that blew me away, you have a very lively vocal take on the title track as Hart looks at her past and then turns toward what is to come in the future. The song’s slight downturn in tempo doesn’t detract in the least. In fact, the point counterpoint between the somewhat slower instrumentation and Hart’s quicker vocal run through end up merging perfectly together.
I loved the slick rhythmic delivery to “The Mood That I’m In”. The song is a fun track that finds Hart singing about the longing for someone you can’t have and then looking for those same qualities in someone else. The chorus is amazingly catchy too:
All I wanna do is cook your bread
I just wanna make sure you’re well fed
I would rather die one hundred ways
Go blind than watch you walk away
Come on home
You are the mood I’m in
The song “Mechanical Heart” was one of two songs I heard online (“Might As Well Smile” was the other) before the release of the album and it certainly whetted my appetite for the disc in full when I first heard it. The song is credited as an ode to Hart’s husband Scott Guetzkow. It has an amazing set of lyrics as Hart sings about him deserving all the love in the world from her, despite their completely opposite personalities.
Hart is at her most bad-ass rocker chick self on the perfectly conceptualized “Trouble”. You can listen to a streaming audio clip of the track below, but believe me when I say that Hart belts out this song as only a hardcore blues rocker could. This is such a good song, you can just imagine it as a classic blues track from back in the day as much as recognizing the song as Hart’s modern classic. When you hear her sing the following verse, there’s no doubt about the conviction she conveys”
Wait a minute, what you say?
You wanna smack my face
Well I ain’t your bitch or your baby
Don’t make me trash this place
It’s been a long road for Beth Hart, but in the last few years her profile has risen dramatically. She’s teamed with guitarist extraordinaire Joe Bonamassa for a couple of hugely successful albums (plus a live release), found a big fan in Slash and gotten a standing ovation for at the Kennedy Center Honors for her performance with Jeff Beck on the Etta James song “I’d Rather Go Blind” as part of honoring blues legend Buddy Guy. Her solo work is still vastly under-appreciated here in the US, but that should certainly be changing with Better Than Home. It is an album that may not be as instantly accessible as some of her past work (and demands you to challenge your expectations as a music fan and listener) but you’ll find so much of what Hart has to offer here to your liking for the extra bit of depth in the composition and performance of the material. Even the songs that didn’t quite connect with me as I might’ve hoped for, I find myself with an appreciation for what Hart was looking to accomplish with each track.
Hart herself says in the liner notes that “This record is really the first time in my life that I feel – If I were about to pass on – that I’ve expressed the heart of my truth.”
I’ve been on this long musical journey with her from the beginning and while I’ve always been moved by each successive release, who am I to argue with that belief? Better Than Home is the latest musical milestone for Hart and I think you’ll find it as fulfilling as both she and I do.
Read the full article with video and images here.