Full Release

A few years ago (it has to be, although it seems as it could hardly have been as much as one), I became aware of a band called The Pretty Reckless. I can't recall how I found out about them, but it may be that I was reading about their lead singer, Taylor Momsen. She had been on a show called "Gossip Girl" that I never saw, and in a movie or movies that I also never saw. In any case, she was going through the inevitable process of rebelling against a forced clean image that always seems to shock people, and this band was the manifestation of that.

At the time, they'd put out one EP and one album. From that output, there were a number of songs that I really loved. I was listening to them constantly, and I was very fond of the band. I easily could have dismissed them on account of Momsen's background, since there's not too much value in music designed to be shocking in order to establish that someone is not a child anymore. There isn't for me, anyway, and I shouldn't speak for others.

I couldn't say then that this was a band with legs necessarily, since I didn't know how long it had taken them to come up with an album's worth of good songs. Well,since then they've released another EP and another album (the latter of which, "Going To Hell", just came last week). I listened to the album a couple of times, and it is not as good as the first in my opinion. That is to say that it doesn't have as many songs that I love without reservation as the first. It's got one song that I really love. After listening to the album a second time, I decided there was no song in the world I wanted to hear but "Heaven Knows".

I will probably not get tired of that track for a while, so I'll just keep playing it, much to the likely chagrin of my roommates and neighbors, for quite a while. After that peters out, I hope I'll discover the latent charm in more of the songs off that album, or else I'll have no recourse but to listen to other music while hoping that their third album outperforms their second and comes close to achieving the level hit by their first. That album, "Light Me Up", is dynamite, and you should check it out.