The Pretty Reckless - Dear God
The Pretty Reckless’ Dear God is a no-frills rock and roll record that tackles love, depression, and taking on life one day at a time. The band's superstar frontwoman, Taylor Momsen, has always been a force to be reckoned with, and her vulnerability is on full display through the album’s fourteen tracks. Momsen has always laid it all out in her music, and she does it more than ever on Dear God, the band’s fifth full-length album.
The album is structured around three different poetic tracks dubbed “Life Evermore”. The first track (“Life Evermore, Pt. 2”) finds Momsen in a relationship that she seems to both want to stay in and get out of at all costs (“No one is real/Except you and me/Whatever it takes/At al costs to be free from/Life Evermore). A distorted guitar riff transitions into hard rock banger “For I Am Death”, Momsen’s raspy-yet-angelic vocal delivery injecting heaps of energy into a song about taking control of fate, taking on the role of the Death itself. The scene is contrasted on the upbeat “When I Wake Up”, which finds her losing control (“When I wake up, I don’t know where I was last night”).
Momsen’s susceptibility to life’s challenges is at its most visible on songs like “Love Me” and the album’s title track, questioning her faith and self worth (“My body is all that I’m worth/And in my mind, I’ve been enslaved/And God, I’m giving it all that I got/So why doesn’t anyone/Love me?/Love me?”). She uses medieval and witchy imagery to paint a picture of heartbreak, like on the fierce “Dragonfire” and the kitschy “Spell On You”, a 60s-inspired rock track that would fit right at home in Hocus Pocus.
The placement of “Spell On You” is well done; the preceding track, “About You”, finds Momsen letting go of a relationship and taking back her power (“What you pay, what it costs/What are we gonna do?It’s all over town, you’ve been messing around/What does it say? What does it say about you?”). The song even ends with Momsen cursing out her ex, although the name is censored. Before that, we get “Life Evermore Pt. 3”, which finds her lamenting the end of said relationship, finding more comfort in drunken nights at bars with strangers than being with this person (“I don’t want you/I never want you/I never wanted you/I thought you should know”)
Following these tracks, the album takes on more of a California beach-rock atmosphere, with “Rollercoaster of Life” even name-checking the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the process. Sure, the words can be a bit cliché at times, but Momsen’s imagery is fun, and her vocal delivery is outstanding. She continues to paint this imagery on “Eye of the Storm”, constructing the picture of a chaotic planet, a world where everyone fights even though we all live under the same roof, seen through the eyes of someone on the brink of letting the storm sweep her away (“Tell the band I’m doing fine/Even though I/Almost died/But I’m still alive, alive, alive”).
One of the album’s penultimate tracks is “Devil In Disguise (Michelle’s Song)”, a beautiful acoustic number paying ode to her former Gossip Girl castmate and friend Michelle Trachtenberg, who tragically passed last year. I believe that the song’s title is a reference to what the narrator in Gossip Girl would call Trachtenberg’s character, “The Devil in Disguise”, but I can’t confirm this, but I feel like the reference would make sense. The album ends on a somber note with “Dark Days” before reaching “Life Evermore Pt. 1”, echoing the first track as Momsen finds herself numbed by life and its eccentricities (“I don’t want to be/Thrilled or surprised by/Life anymore/My life anymore/My life evermore”).
Dear God demonstrates the mercurial nature of Taylor Momsen as she desperately tries to find light in the darkness, while often letting that same darkness encompass her like a warm blanket. This album is the two-faced nature of depression, personified through music. It felt like The Pretty Reckless- in existence since 2010 - finally got their flowers when it was announced that they’d be opening for the legendary AC/DC on their current tour (they’ve been on the road for the last two years), even though they’ve been releasing killer albums for the better part of two decades. The timing of the release of Dear God is excellent; new fans will be able to get a taste of the medicine they’ve been missing out on these past fifteen years.
