CD Review: Taylor Momsen's The Pretty Reckless LIGHT ME UP

The debut album by Taylor Momsen's hard rock band The Pretty Reckless LIGHT ME UP is a very impressive effort. This outrageous 17 year old can really sing and rock hard as well. It's one heck of a great hard rock alternative rock album with hardly any throwaway tunes out of the 11 tracks. The album finally was released February 8, in both the U.S. and Canada, although it had been previously available as import as early as late August in Europe or Australia. Taylor Momsen has really established herself as one of the great female hard rock vocalists with this fantastic debut effort. This album is just plain terrific.

Taylor Momsen wrote all the songs for this album, some of which were recorded when she was only 16 years old. Sounding much older than her young age, Taylor Momsen belts out some very tough sounding songs with hard hitting and highly sexualized lyrics. You have to wonder how a nice Catholic girl who attended Our Lady Of Lourdes School got to this point of doing such tough hard rock ditties about back seat car sex or other sexualized themes. In just a short time time, Taylor Momsen has gone from being the darling of teen fashion magazines such as TEEN VOGUE and former GOSSIP GIRL star to establishing herself as probably the greatest teen bad girl rocker since The Runaways. That's one heck of a journey.

While offering up a few rock ballads, LIGHT ME UP is mostly straight ahead hard rock. If you like groups such as Hole, ACDC and other tough acts not afraid to turn up their amps and belt out tough lyrics, this debut effort by The Pretty Reckless should really satisfy. Worldwide the album has yielded three singles, the tough sounding "Make Me Wanna Die", "Miss Nothing" and the more rock ballad, "Just Tonight". But, beyond these singles, there's plenty of good songs here. It's a real joy to have to review a fresh hard rock debut album that's this good.

The Bottom Line: Wow! What a great debut album. Very impressive. Taylor Momsen is a fantastic lead singer for this band. Her destiny is to a be a rock great. Forget GOSSIP GIRL and concentrate on making music this good, Taylor. Well done! ++++(Four stars, excellent. If you buy any cd this year, then it should be this one. This is one great debut album and not some joke with some teenage TV queen making some terrible and embarrassing pop trash album better used as a coffee coaster than anything. This is the real deal, hard rock just as the good Lord intended it to be played. Great stuff here!