You're Pretty: Beautiful Accident

Sometimes I lay awake at night and ask myself: Self, can you still rock? I grew up on Metallica. My first favorite band was Iron Maiden. I own albums by Slayer and Pantera. But now, with a few notable exceptions (Tool, Deftones), I hear the big hot & heavy bands and either yawn or wince. Slipknot? Ooh, Halloween masks. That was scary when I was five. The Bizkit? The Roach? I’m waiting for the ghost of John Belushi to wreak havoc on their frat house.

Maybe I’m getting old.

And then along comes You’re Pretty, restoring my faith in music that begs for absurd volume levels for proper enjoyment. Their second full-length album, Beautiful Accident, pummels and pleas, rants and roars, and defies the listener’s attempts to pigeonhole them.

Frontwoman Beth Musolff is equally capable of the mellow and the manic. On “I Am Not” she begins like Portishead singer Beth Gibbons dropped in the middle of a Korn recording session, with the guitars inching along creepily as the bass and drums build to explosion. And when they hit that peak, and Musolff escapes a suffocating lover’s hold on her, the song achieves brilliance. “I Am Not” should be an instant modern classic.

Musolff is unmistakably a star-in-waiting. But You’re Pretty is hardly a mere star vehicle. Chris Stenger propels the songs with his rumbling bass. Steven Kern, meanwhile, is responsible for those strangely appropriate sound effects blipping, whirring and spinning in your headphones. And Dave Keckeisen’s relentless crashing on the drums highlights each blistering rise.

And, while they stick to the traditional guitar-bass-drums, they somehow manage to create songs that seem like they sneaked in an extra instrument somewhere. The beginning of “Not Coming Down” sounds like slow-motion ska. “Day” begins with an ambience that conjures up early Moby and smoke machines and glowsticks.

What really sets You’re Pretty apart is that their music is hard and edgy but they manage to avoid the doom-and-gloom that you’d expect them to be swimming in. It’s an album about loss, yes, but it’s also an album about finding your freedom; and, with it, your happiness.

On “Out of Reach,” another heavy rocker, the singer takes a candid look at her dependency on her own art. “Gripping the mic in rage feeling like I don't fit in my own skin / But for one hour I am home," Musolff sings. Here’s to the hope that she never leaves the house.

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