Heart

Brigade

Anthemic

Review Score:

(10/10)
Following on from the perfectly polished 1987 world-wide smash Bad Animals, the Wilson sistas & co. came up with a much more raw sounding opus which remained closer to their folk-rock roots, without alienating the new fans they had acquired since their 1985 smash, Heart. Brigade is a simply stunning & savage tour de force, brimming with plenty of textured musical sounds & innovative instruments on a rock album. From the opening gambit of Wild Child with its live! sounding guitar riff & drum intro, the album sounds so energetic & raw. All I Wanna Do (the controversial song about a woman getting pregnant to a stranger because her man ain't got the good to do it) is a perfect link between the AOR ballad which Heart were famed for & the new style they sought to deliver to their audience. The album contains a few rock-along trax with cheesy lyrix ahoy (Tall, Dark, Handsome Stranger & Call Of The Wild), but is predominantly full of lush ballads - most notably the gorgeously layered harmonies of Under The Sky, Nancy's wonderful US Smash, Stranded, the suggestive Secret & the album's closer, entitled I Love You, which magnificently reminds you what brilliant vocalists the Wilson sisters are & sends chills up your spine. There are a few trax which really should not have been included (The Night sounds like it was thrown together & Call of the Wild is dull rock), but hey, 2 bad trax out of 13 ain't terrible. With a big stadium world-tour to accompany the album (I saw it in Belfast & it rocked!), Heart fans certainly got the message about this one

More Reviews: