My California
Artist: Beth Hart
Label: Mascot Records
Time: 12 tracks / 50 mins

They say that there is a fine line between pleasure and pain, and this release traces it. Hart has had a lot to live through: her father went to jail for drug use when she was five years old, and when he came out, her parents divorced. Her sister was the person who could share the pain, but she too developed a drug habit. With her beautifully clear and expressive voice, a tremulous mix of Belinda Carlisle and Kendall Payne,  Beth starting winning singing competitions from an early age, but early fame took its toll on her too.

It takes a while to appreciate how well she has assembled the song order. The set dawns with the title track’s backwards-tape type of drone riff, over which she sings a California-based love-song that mentions the sun rising there. On the next track you start to see the mix of hurt and hope. She sings of waking up with tears on her skin, and later of scars on her skin, but still she finds “Life is Calling.” After this, we hear how happiness laughs at her, but she still expresses this in upbeat music. The only real anger that comes through is when she tells a lover to just drive, with a resignation that shows when she sings that she would rather have bad love than no love at all. These are glimpses into a life that was tough from birth.

Perhaps the saddest early track is “Love is the Hardest,” where we see her numbness and self-doubt: “I know it’s all my fault… If I had a chance, maybe I’d forgive myself / If I had a heart, I’d give it to someone else… I don’t love anymore, can’t give anymore/ I don’t have anymore.”

These early songs work as a build-up to the storming heart of the disc, for there is more to the personal story. Hart tried to earn money through music to get her older sister help for her drug habit, but within days of getting a record deal, her sister died, losing her battles with substances, jail and mental stability. In the past, Hart’s hurt has sometimes come out in Janis Joplin-like shouting and aggression, but this disc is a truly eloquent expression of her heart.

“Sister Heroine” is the core poignant lament to her sister that shows love through the obvious difficulties that she put her family through. Once I understood the back story to this song with its “Candle in the Wind” tone, it had me singing and crying at the same time, and the louder I sang, the more the tears flowed, pleasure and pain entwined. 

Shaking lilies in the yard, your sweet face I will remember; how I'm gonna miss your stubborn heart,
So goodbye Sister heroine, I'll remember everything, I love you…
Goodbye white trash beauty queen, your crooked heart & your beat up dreams, I love you...

It hurts to laugh here without you; a piece inside of us is gone.
Mama tries to smile too; ain’t never seen that woman try so hard…
Your skin & bones don't cast no shadow on an empty bed in Motel Six

After this track, other songs come across in its light. She calls out to God, saying :

Take it easy on me, I will trust you/ I will let you hurt me carefully.
Take it easy on me, I break easily / This steel butterfly will learn to fly eventually.

It is as if she has no role model to show her that God’s love is pure and genuine, something that she rarely seems to have experienced.

Please forgive such a subjective review, but I cannot remember the last time that I heard a singer open her life so vulnerably, holding so little back; yet she still writes with restraint, subtlety and warmth, hope often seeping through, despite the pain. Some writers convey a message, but with no real feeling; others get the feeling through the music, but cannot articulate lyrically with any skill. Hart’s eloquence is such that the brain can admire it and the heart can’t fail to feel it. And on top of this, her tunes are so singable. After nearly twenty plays now, the words just come automatically, and have done for some time.

Part of its immediacy may be the tactic of recording the songs the day that they were written, but I can’t see that longer production times would take any sheen off the craft of these tracks.

This is highly recommended. The process is simple: buy, play, listen, pray, cry, sing. It may be one that you are still singing decades from now. 

Derek Walker