Heart: Red Velvet Car

On Heart’s first studio album in six years, the Seattle-based sister act of singer Ann and guitarist Nancy Wilson prove that, musically speaking at least, you shouldn’t mess with a good thing. The 2010 version of Heart—which first shook the male- dominated hard-rock scene with the 1976 debut Dreamboat Annie and scored twenty-one Top 40 hits—still resonates with the mid-70s work of Led Zeppelin and Rod Stewart, but also adds folkish acoustic flourishes of dobro, lap steel, fiddle, and viola. Thematically, the album sports a balanced mood and material that often evokes a personal note on songs that range from the driving Friday- night cruise anthem “Wheels” to the beat-heavy ballad “Sunflower,” with its allusions to the hopefulness of perennial flowers that return after seasonal changes. That underlying message of survival and rebirth—a metaphor for the cyclical nature of romance and the transience of fame—also rings through the lines of the album’s re-recorded closer, “Sand,” which first appeared on Ann Wilson’s 1990 acoustic side-project, the Lovemongers. That closing track is particularly poignant, given the ability of Heart and the Wilson sisters to flourish even in the seemingly nutrient-depleted sands of the ever-shifting pop-music scene. This is quintessential classic rock.