Heart

Over Heart's eleven-year recording career, the band has often been charged with creating
standard-issue stadium rock. That accusation hasn't always been fair: the Wilson sisters and
their band mates know how to make the formula yield valid, vital hard pop. On seven of the
ten tracks on Bad Animals, they do just that. Even if Heart had nothing else to offer, its
records would be worth the vinyl they're pressed on because of Ann Wilson's v... More >

You'd never know Ann Wilson was riding the catchy intricacies of hired songwriting unless you listened more carefully than the resulting trifles deserve or her relentless overkill permits. And although the camp follower in me is sometimes tickled by the mismatch, it was the professional in me who noticed it. Only in the title cut, where a failed opera singer throws down the gauntlet for the heavy metal boors she's sworn to defend, does the end justify the means. (Grade: C)