Heading into her teens, but with a mature but-troubled head from early on, this here’s Beth Hart’s eleventh studio album. Her last two crashed high in assorted international charts, and this looks likely to follow suit. 2022’s A Tribute To Led Zeppelin could’ve been a misstep yet proved otherwise, though I still can’t see the overall point; why go looking for comparisons when you already get cheap seat comparisons to Janis Joplin while sounding nothing like her. War In My Mind was all the way back in 2019, and You Still Got Me sees the lady reaching back there for inspiration, reflecting on some sad memories, offering the odd lessons learnt since, and sometimes having a little fun. It’s well rounded, I’ll tell you now before we even get onto the first track.

Wearing its heart behind a low-cut bulletproof jacket, ‘Savior With A Razor’ is a slow blues rocking number, that probably owes a debt to some early Free riff and a certain Bond-like theme hankering in the background, but in the hands of Guns ‘N Roses’ Slash and his dirty wailing guitar only old soaks like me will bore you with that. Whereas the reality is, the man throttling away on his six string is the perfect accompaniment to Hart’s ferocious vocal delivery as she arm wrestles the mental projectiles life offers her, and despite only being “lonely in the crowd”, how she’s currently winning.

Another guest player has his hand in ‘Suga N My Bowl’, as Eric Gales similarly makes out like a funked-up Paul Kossoff over many a note squeezed note deadly tightly on this shrugging indifferent bravado towards a litany of addictions, be they booze, drugs and no doubt sex; just for good measure. ‘Never Underestimate A Gal’ comes on like a Bavarian drinking tune, upbeat with a swing, but at its heart lyrically stands revealed a revenge murder ballad.

I’ve seen a couple of references to Tom Waits relating to next number, ‘Drunk On Valentine’, and a smoky bar just after midnight is where they might meet, but rather it echoes James Shelton’s much-covered ‘Lilac Wine’. Piano, a deeply haunting trumpet, and a tipsy vocal delivery that enchants, both oozing sensuality and concern for the chanteuse delivering its heartfelt near-poetic lines. Thrown up in compete contrast, or possibly public subterfuge, is the big and bolshy ‘Wanna Be Big Bad Johnny Cash’ that’s comes across exactly as written on the tin. Cue twanging baritone guitar that’s a little but country a little bit rock ‘n roll, some playful cussing and an expressive melodic vocal delivery that may just have you singing badly along.

‘Wonderful World’ is “a song written for the lineage of women in my family,” Hart’s said of this anthemic piano ballad that’s got coming-of-age, slice-of-life type movie soundtrack imposed in its DNA. Dancing somewhere between Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Nicks is ‘Little Heartbreak Girl’, another piano-based number, it’s a gentler Gospel-styled trip down Memory Lane or lesson-to-self. Again, calling for contrasting dynamics we get ‘Don’t Call The Police’ – It’s the tale of George Floyd, a black man shot by a white policeman. I feel the drama, anguish, and despair of this song, and it works within such parameters. However, I am an Englishman who happens to be Anglo-Saxon by descent, and I listen as an outside to the American cultural experience, despite believing we’ve all fallen a long way short of Martin Luther King’s ideals.

Dedicated to her husband, Scott, ‘You Still Got Me’ is a torch song of purposeful sincerity, truth and devotion, whereas ‘Pimp Like That’ with its big-assed theatrically slow jazz rolls comes on like a hip-hop jive-derived modern skewered reflection of Jonie Mitchell’s Mingus period. The album calls time with ‘Machine Gun Vibrato’, husky-voiced one minute, howling the next, a little bit old Gothic, somewhat indie, the blues beating away, harrowing, sexual, indeterminate perhaps rather than enigmatic, still as with much of this album you find yourself listening hard for signs in the lyrics that signify all is well in Beth Hart’s world right now. I tend to think so, overall. What I will affirm is this is a collection of mainly strong songs, performed earnestly by all involved, and sung with class, power and sensitivity throughout.

• Reviewed by Paul H Birch.
• You Still Got Me is released via Mascot Label Group and is available here.
• Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube Channel

Track List:

1. Savior With A Razor
2. Suga N My Bowl
3. Never Underestimate A Gal
4. Drunk On Valentine
5. Wanna Be Big Bad Johnny Cash
6. Wonderful World
7. Little Heartbreak Girl
8. Don’t Call The Police
9. You Still Got Me
10. Pimp Like That
11. Machine Gun Vibrato