The Post-Rockist

Heartless Bastards - Into the Open
(from All This Time)

Cincinnati is known for a few things: its curious taste in chili, its poor race relations, and its frequently arrested pro football players. For any number of reasons, rock music isn’t regularly listed near the top of the list of the Queen City’s popular contributions to the world at large. Lately, it seems that the names that do get out there are often equated with rhythm-section-for-hire for Detroit ex-pat Jack White.

But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any local acts with a potential for interest outside the immediate tri-state – far from it. Heartless Bastards, with their no-nonsense brand of throwback power trio rock’n’roll, have carved out quite a name for themselves in recent years. They play hard rock without being aggressive, and they play blues rock without being, well, Clapton. With so few distractions present in their music, Heartless Bastards have managed to capitalize on a simple formula that is too often overlooked in much of today’s guitar-based bands: strong, solid songs – period. In fact, while enjoying the fruits of their relative success – rubbing shoulders with the Black Keys, playing Bonnaroo and Desdemona, touring the country, signing to Fat Possum – the Bastards have barely found time for even the occasional hometown show. So, after two years of near misses of not seeing the band perform live, when I heard that they would be playing a free show a few yards outside my doorstep, I knew I would finally have my chance to be clued into what all the other locals had been raving about since I moved in.

No opening band was needed to bring the flocks out. By 8:00 p.m. there were enough nicotine-addicted scenesters to leave 14^th Street padded with a soft carpeting of half-smoked Camels for days after the event. The ratio of hipster beards to concert-goers was at a staggering 1:3, and the ratio even applied to the band itself, one being spotted on drummer Kevin Vaughn. Vaughn and bassist Mike Lamping both hunched over their instruments, wearing equally sullen, guilty expressions on their faces like a pair of boys who had just been found out looking through their dad’s dusty old Playboys. But despite the reliable talent of this hairy-fisted rhythmic duo, when people talk about Heartless Bastards, they really only talk about one thing: Erika Wennerstrom’s voice. Somewhere between a female Muddy Waters and a Midwestern Polly Jean Harvey, Wennerstrom, with a pained expression on her face, exhorts each syllable like some ghostly emanation over the surge of minor key blues rock. It is truly something, to hear that huge sound come out of a figure that is nearly dwarfed in size by her Gibson and, implausibly, stay in key the entire time. In as few words as possible, this is dirty ‘Nati rock.

The Heartless Bastards were set up on a stage outside of Lightborne Studios, the video and design firm that had filmed the music video for the title track off of last year’s All This Time, and which can be seen below. Being in the historic Over-the-Rhine district, there were a few odd disruptions that may have agitated an out-of-towner, but local Bastards merely shrugged off the wailing ambulances, the crazy lady with the inside-out T-shirt who was raving something incomprehensible about how awful rock music is, and – why not – the muscular, grey-haired man who was gyrating like an epileptic shadowboxer near the front of the stage. Ah, Cincinnati knows how to bring ’em.

-Posted by Todd