Beth Hart - "You Still Got Me"
Her voice is all we need, anyway
Blues Rock Queen Beth Hart is back with her 14th studio album. If you’re looking for pipes, Hart has them in spades.
I was introduced to Hart by an old fogey on a site dedicated to playing Risk1 — yeah, the board game. I don’t recall my introductory moments with a lot of artists, but Beth Hart makes an immediate impression.
This is especially true when the introductory material was the title track from 2018’s Black Coffee, her third (and most recent) collaboration with Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa. I also need to take a moment to highlight her last album, 2022’s A Tribute to Led Zeppelin. I don’t really cover cover albums, but I do listen to them, and damn if she didn’t do them justice.2 This tribute album has the best iterations that “Kashmir”, “Stairway to Heaven”, “The Rain Song”, and several other classic songs have seen in decades.
So maybe it should come as no surprise that Hart has garnered enough of a reputation for herself that her new album starts off with a feature from Slash, of all people. Opening track “Savior With a Razor” has seriously beefed up instrumentation because a legendary guitarist has been given a huge chunk of the final mix.
The song’s tone and “taking the devil down” mantra also feel very well timed for certain current events including, allegedly, a certain green-hatted plumber.
“Savior With a Razor” is absolutely one of the best songs on the album, too.
The album’s second track is the only other feature — “Suga N My Bowl” is a reimagining of the classic, nearly hundred-year-old blues song “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” with blues guitarist Eric Gales contributing his considerable talents.
“Never Underestimate a Gal” is a dark cabaret murder ballad which is a bit on the short side. But it is ultimately a fun little tune, with the melodic payoff in the chorus rising above the limitations of the stale carnival/burlesque music foundation.
The rest of the album is full of half-hits and outright misses. “Drunk On Valentine” is abysmally slow, but carried by an extraordinary sax line; “Wonderful World” is good, but a bit repetitive. Both are enjoyable largely on the strength of Hart’s performance.
“Wanna Be Big Bad Johnny Cash” and “Little Heartbreak Girl” are forgettable at best. The former feels half-baked on several fronts, and the latter is stale.
“Don’t Call The Police” is a bipolar, mournful ACAB dirge/anthem which interpolates the famous hook from “The Phantom of the Opera”, reworking it lower, heavier, and with fewer steps. The verses are minimalist and incredibly slow, building into big, bold, angry choruses which have the misfortune of consisting mostly of the title. Yet, for all of these faults, it’s still a song with its own unique beauty, and most of that is contained in the details — little artistic touches in the execution of the instrumentation and vocals which are easy to overlook if you aren’t paying attention.
Paying attention is the hard part, though — it’s the longest track on the album at 6:31, and the verses really do drag. More than anything, I feel that the verses just need to be more pointed; all this swelling and building into this big moment, and you just repeat the same four words five times? The message is more important than that.
The album’s final three songs are more solid, finishing fairly strong. Title track “You Still Got Me”, in particular, fires on all cylinders.
At large, I believe that the compositions could be better, generally. But the star of the album is Hart, through and through. She shines on even the more mediocre songs. Her vocals are a powerhouse performance, and I hope she has a few more good years in her.
Rating: Green
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The support on this cover album runs deep, but is headlined by Rob Cavallo as Producer and David Campbell orchestrating the orchestra (yes, there’s a deep strings section). Cavallo also plays guitar alongside Tim Pierce.