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Album review: Heart’s ‘Red Velvet Car’

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Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the new Heart album — one of only two the group has released over the last decade and a half — is as strong as it is. Outlasting expectations comes naturally to Ann and Nancy Wilson, who in the mid-’80s transformed Heart from the lean hard-rock act responsible for ‘Magic Man’ and ‘Barracuda’ to the slick power-ballad factory behind ‘These Dreams’ and ‘What About Love.’

Still, rare is the band doing work this good at such an advanced age; rarer still is the band doing it, as Heart does on ‘Red Velvet Car,’ without employing a sober return-to-roots approach.

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The best tunes here are as fun — and as delightfully trashy — as anything in the Heart songbook: In ‘WTF,’ Ann flexes her powerful She-Ra vocals over Nancy’s killer fuzz-grunge riff; ‘Queen City,’ an ode to the Wilsons’ native Seattle, features a chorus lyric composed in large part of pirate slang. Later, ‘Death Valley’ earns its title with some gorgeous evil-angel harmony singing.

‘Red Velvet Car’ also emphasizes Heart’s mystical-folkie side in cuts like the slow-burning title track and ‘Sand,’ which the Wilsons first performed with their acoustic side project, the Lovemongers. But even there you can hear a joy and a sense of humor in the music that distinguishes it from the grim output of so many heritage acts.

Thirty-four years after the band’s debut, Heart’s dreamboat sails on.

-- Mikael Wood

Heart

‘Red Velvet Car’

(Legacy)

Three and a half stars (Out of four)

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