Dear God
The Pretty Reckless · Hard Rock
“You called it a declaration of identity. It's a great album with the confidence to overstay its welcome.”
Taylor, you made the most comfortable record of your career and then stretched it past the point of comfort. Dear God is a band fully at home in its own stadium sized skin, all survival and mortality and temptation, and when it hits, like on the title track, it is one of the most powerful things you have ever put to tape, a haunting atmosphere wrapped around a genuinely commanding vocal. The trouble is the runtime and the weight. This is your most spiritual, existential, emotionally exhausting album, and exhausting is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. There is a quiet paranoia humming underneath it, the sense that you felt you had to say something new and totalizing, and that pressure bloats a great forty minute record into a longer one that asks for more devotion than every track earns. Sexy, sentimental stadium rock is a real lane and you own it. Just remember that a declaration of identity lands hardest when it knows when to stop talking.
When this band locks in, few in modern hard rock sound this assured. The title track is a career highlight and proof the fire is very much still lit.
Over bloated runtime
“Multiple reviews flagged the album as over bloated, with a quiet paranoia that the band must have something new and totalizing to say.”
The fix Trim the back third. A leaner tracklist would turn a strong album into a knockout.
Weight without variety
“Described as the band's most spiritual, existential and emotionally exhausting record, leaning hard on survival, mortality and redemption throughout.”
The fix Vary the emotional register. Even the heaviest records need a window open somewhere.
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