Pearl
(White Fox Music)
It should come as no surprise that Ms. Pearl Aday, the stepdaughter of larger-than-life rocker Meat Loaf (a/k/a Marvin Lee Aday), should approach the performances on her debut album with the same sort of bombastic, almost operatic fervor as the bulk of her stepfather's songs. While Pearl has lent her big voice to a handful of Meat Loaf albums since the mid-1990s, and moonlighted with folks like Motley Crue and Ace Frehley, nothing could prepare the listener for the charm, charisma, and, well...chutzpah that you'll find on Little Immaculate White Fox.
The album's cover shows a partially-clad Ms. Pearl, wearing naught but a vest and some beads and looking every bit her part as, indeed, a "little immaculate white fox," channeling her inner Janis in both attitude and appearance. Much like the great Ms. Joplin, however, down in the grooves where it counts, Pearl is less fox than wildcat, strangling every bit of energy from the lyrics of each song while the guitar screams and soars behind her, and the rhythm section delivers trainwreck chaos behind her.
Little Immaculate White Fox jumps the gate with "Rock Child," a rampaging semi-autobiographical scorched-earth hard rocker with a twin guitar assault from husband Scott Ian (of Anthrax), and Mother Superior/Rollins Band veteran Jim Wilson. With Devil Doll's Matt Tecu delivering hand-grenade drumbursts, "Rock Child" hits like an earthquake followed by a tornado followed by a thunderstorm...and your ears are the lonely lightning rod. Ditto for "Check Out Charlie," which features a guest appearance by Ted Nugent, the fretboard mangler brought in to lively things up just in case Ian and Wilson don't deliver enough six-string pyrotechnics. Ol' Ted may be a right-wing jackass and an outright blowhard, but few guitarists can deliver the rumbling malevolence that he provides "Check Out Charlie."
Pearl tends to overreach at times...her voice doesn't yet possess the pathos capable of wrestling a ballad like "Mama" into submission...and the hard/soft alternating tracklist sounds less contrived than that of an artist in search of a sound. Pearl's only real stumble, however, is with the album's cover of the Ike & Tina Turner classic "Nutbush City Limits." Scott Ian and Carl "Nalle" Colt's guitars sound more mechanical than organic, and lack the slippery funk of Ike's original fat groove. Pearl, too, overreaches badly in trying to duel with Tina's original vocals, which came at a time with the Queen of Soul was at her creative peak; by comparison, Aday's vox come across as pale albeit powerful, more loud that proud, tho' you have to give her credit for trying to hurdle such a height in the first place.
The rest of Little Immaculate White Fox sits comfortably in semi-metallic hard rock turf, mixing up power-ballads like the unusually subdued "My Heart Isn't In It" with strutting, guitar-driven slobberknockers like "Lovepyre" and the breakneck "Whore," which could easily pass for a 1970s-era classic rock tune, save for the fuse-overloading fretwork. The album-closing, slow-paced "Anything" features Alice In Chain's Jerry Cantrell providing some intricate and downright elegant guitar that rides beneath Pearl's subtle vocals.
Taken altogether, Little Immaculate White Fox is an encouraging debut that, while misfiring once or twice, nevertheless introduces an exciting new talent to the rock 'n' roll world. A decent lyricist and a powerhouse vocalist, once Pearl Aday finds sure footing in a creative identity, she's going to be a rock 'n' roll predator worth keeping an eye one....
DOWNLOAD: "Rock Child," "Check Out Charlie," "Whore" REV. KEITH A. GORDON
