THE PRETTY RECKLESS – Dear God

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  THE PRETTY RECKLESS
• Duration: 00:50:07
• Available from: 06/26/2026
• Label:

• Fearless Records

After having accompanied AC/DC around stadiums all over the world for the last three years – complete with a bat bite that is very Ozzy – it's not that The Pretty Reckless needed particular visibility, but in order not to miss anything, singer Taylor Momsen in the last year played with the surviving members of Soundgarden to celebrate their entry into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and with the Foo Fighters, fishing out a couple of songs from an unreleased Mariah grunge album Carey (!) recorded in the mid-nineties and never released.

With all this media exposure, it doesn't matter that five years have passed since the last “Death By Rock And Roll”, interspersed with a maxi EP (“Other Words”) and a Christmas mini-album, the band of the former protagonist of “Gossip Girl” confirms itself as one of the leading names of the modern hard rock scene, and Taylor Momsen follows Lzzy Hale (Halestorm) and Amy Lee (Evanescence) in an ideal triptych of 'rock priestesses' of the years Two thousand.
Compared to her colleagues, the New York singer/actress has found with her band a perfect balance between the biting timbre and the aesthetic kinderwhore of the Riot Grrrl of the nineties and of Courtney Love's Hole, more exposed to the media, combined with the dark sensuality of Garbage; all on a hard rock rhythmic base that starts from Led Zeppelin and reaches Soundgarden, as evident from the initial “For I Am Death”, already released as a single and exemplifying the heavier tone of the new album “Dear God”.
The spirit of the widow Cobain hovers overbearingly on “When I Wake Up”, opened and closed by a Nirvanian bass line, but Taylor Momsen's point of reference has always been Soundgarden, so much so that in the most painful moments (“Love Me”, the title track) it almost seems like we are witnessing the reincarnation of the late Chris Cornell in female guise.
In addition to the charismatic frontwoman, the rest of the band also manages to carve out its space, especially in the long-lasting songs: from the psychedelic folk of “Dragonfire” to the solo of the title track, guitarist Ben Philips carries on the tradition of seventies rock, without disdaining some more modern references (“Dark Days”, for example, follows the structure of “Like A Stone” by Tom Morello's Audioslave too closely).
From the sparkling pop-grunge of “About You” to the jaunty keyboards of “I Put A Spell On You” (the same name as the classic blues), passing through the funky-like rhythms of “Rollercoaster Of Life” (with a guitar touch over there Jack Frusciante) and the hypnotic chant of “Eye Of The Storm”: the effect, especially in the second half of the album, is that of a dive into the alternative scene of the late nineties, when the aforementioned Garbage, Skunk Anansie, Anouk and Red Hot Chilli Peppers dominated the charts and MTV schedules.

Let's add an Old West acoustic ballad (“Devil In Disguise (Michelle's Song)”), as well as the curious experiment of “Life Evermore”, broken into three parts scattered throughout the tracklist, and the report of a rather convincing record in itsmix & match' of more or less vintage sound: it is clear that “Dear God” does not invent anything and is a record designed 'for the masses', but Taylor Momsen confirms herself as one of the most versatile and credible interpreters of the genre, capable of bringing together three generations of rockers, starting from the seventies hard rock foundations, passing through the alternative of the nineties up to the modern tone of the tens.