The Heat

About

<i>The Heat</i> (2007), Needtobreathe's second album, finds the band gaining a firmer grasp on their identity. True, they touch upon the usual reference points in contemporary rock — there’s the U2-ish big guitar washes, the Coldplay-like falsetto notes and so on. But singer/guitarist Bear Rinehart and his band mates manage to freshen up this formula by mixing guilelessness with a classic rock swagger. They can show real aggression, as the pummeling “Restless” makes clear, and the album’s title song finds them adept at slippery shuffles. <i>The Heat</i>’s best moments, though, are acoustic-slanted tracks like “Spare The Time” and “More Time,” which recalls the scruffy blues-rock of the Faces and the Black Crowes. All told, <i>The Heat</i> is a bid for mass appeal that manages to sound uncompromised in both its music and message.

via Apple Music

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