Look out! Hellcat Lzzy has got her mojo back
JUSt as it’s easier to write of things that annoy or irritate than of what makes you smile, so it’s tougher to write of good times rather than bad. tunes abound of break-ups, unrequited love, dark little revenges... but when artists try to go upbeat, they can end up as intellectual as DNCE’s Cake By the Ocean.
Not so Lzzy Hale, frontwoman of Halestorm, whose adroit new album Vicious includes hard-hitting tracks such as Do Not Disturb, telling how the sparks of love set off a raging inferno, while Conflicted’s slow-burning rhythm captures the urgency of desire.
All very jolly – yet the album’s origins lie in difficult times. According to the press release: ‘Self-doubt and depression clawed at the edges of Lzzy’s mind when it came time to pen Halestorm’s fourth album.’
Really? Can this be the same bad-ass Lzzy who all the girls want to be and all the guys want to be with, the guitar-slinging, leather-clad possessor of the best voice in rock in 30 years?
Down a crackly line from Nashville, tennessee – forever home of country music but now a go-to destination for bands of all stripes seeking inspiration – Lzzy’s voice growls like the engine of a Dodge Hellcat, as if her vocal cords have been dipped in tupelo honey and bourbon, then dried in the smoke of 1,000 Lucky Strikes. (She’s actually an expert in cosseting that golden larynx.)
‘When we started writing for the album, it felt like we were going through the motions,’ she confides. ‘I was questioning myself – have I lost it? Can I do this any more? It was a weird time, just trying to reconnect.’
For a moment it felt like she had lost her mojo, but Atlantic Records had the answer in producer Nick Raskulinecz, a veteran of work with heavyweights Evanescence, Korn, Rush and Alice In Chains. An album’s worth of songs was binned – and from the ensuing studio jams emerged Vicious.
‘Nick was definitely the fifth member of the band and he wanted to capture our energy live without making a live record, so he kept us at it,’ says Pennsylvanian Lzzy. ‘there was no slacking off.’
THE album captures the band’s onstage magic (hear for yourself at Glasgow’s 02 Academy on September 23) and is the harvest of decades on the road.
But does the grind of global touring never wear down Lzzy, one of the world’s few bona fide rock stars?
‘touring is tiring, but I can’t do without it,’ she says. ‘Your passion is your affliction. Our mission statement has always been “Do what you love”.’
While Garbage’s Scots frontwoman Shirley Manson has hit out at sexism preventing women being taken seriously in the music business, Lzzy remains hopeful the tide is turning.
She reflects: ‘When we started out, I got comments like, “the merchandise table is over there.” But I’d use it as a weapon and shock people when I got on stage.
‘Yes, being a woman in rock is a tough sell. You get all that “novelty act” stuff. But it’s been great to see audiences go from 60/40 male to female to 40/60.’
Meanwhile, this is an album that reveals Lzzy and the band’s growing maturity, lyrically and musically – and shows they can still have fun with it.
Vicious is out now on Atlantic Records.