THE PEARL HARTS – REVIEW

The Pearl Harts: Voodoo Daddy's Showroom - June 2023

This article was first published on the Grapevine Live Website, 1st June 2023

by Chris Perry | Jun 1, 2023 | Music, Reviews

Presaged by a (insert your own collective noun here) of photographers, The Pearl Harts are attracting a lot of media attention right now. At one point, early in the evening, the paying punters only just matched the number of paparazzi present. I was intrigued to hear what so many lensmen had come to capture, (I saw no lenswomen).

I pondered on the name. Pearl, (a precious, rarely-formed jewel, found in oysters) and Harts, (females of the deer species, an animal kept for hunting for sport and venison, idealised as strong and free-spirited), which is an aural pun on ‘hearts’, suggesting a precious sensitivity too; a poetic and interesting band name. Promising.

Are the Pearl Harts the future of 21st Century rock? How far can duos take rock music? 

Listen to local band Whiskey Lover Bass Boy, for example, and you’ll see there is a lot of creative space to explore in this field yet.

These were just two of many questions I considered, as Kirsty stormed through power chords and Sara pounded the skins and crashed the cymbals, in a set evoking the classic sounds of heavy rock. This sound was previously only produced by four-piece bands, until the dawn of The White Stripes, or the later emergence of Royal Blood.

The sound of The Pearl Harts was intense and this matching black, PU / faux leather jeans duo, shook the ancient timbers of Voodoo Daddy’s Showroom. They rocked the room so much, that any deathwatch beetles present were most-likely dead by the end of the set.

Wild Me, Different Kinda Girl, Hit The Bottle and Suck It Up are songs that lyrically position the band firmly in the rock genre. All numbers punching a fist into the face of the social status quo. The Pearl Harts will go down an absolute storm at Monsters of Rock type festivals in Europe and North America, if that’s what they are gunning for.

A guitar string malfunction, meant an awkward moment, while Kirsty delved into the kit bag for a spare guitar. This left Sara to ad lib with the thinning audience. This was the lightest part of the show, giving some insight into the character of the performers.

Until this point we had been presented with raunchy, rock ‘n’ roll of the chopped chords variety, wailing manipulated feedback, frequently repeated song lines, short guitar soloing, accompanied by brief snippets of rock’s ageless rhetorical monologue. Yes, Norwich was having a good time, but most of the city’s population was having it elsewhere. During this impromptu pause, we got to see the human side of two working musicians. Nice people.

The audience was predominantly male. Several would have been able to remember Joan Jett first bursting onto the rock scene to prove that guitars, bass and drums are not the commercial preserve of XY chromosomes. In our gender-fluid world, every punter tonight was obviously a connoisseur of heavy rock music, or at least heavy rock curious, photogenicology of female rockers, being the very least of their interests.

Let me be frank with you. There may be a strong market for The Pearl Harts. They do what they do well enough. It is loud and raunchy. The duo present themselves with an eye on the rock consumer. The act, the trousers, the song titles, the rock rhythms and tunes, are all on trend for the modern rocker. However, the venue was too small for this much noise and it was getting late on a school night, at the end of the third Bank Holiday of the month, so they lost a fair few of the rock curious customers, who had filled the room for the stimulating art-rock of Hot Wax and the entertaining evening openers, Collars.

Will Pearl Harts ham it up and go for tongue-in-cheek rock, or head toward big rock festivals, where the biker jacket and jean jacket wearing, long haired head-shakers will probably lap them up? Their new album Love Chaos is well put together and sits happily in the traditional rockcategory. If you are into rock, I am sure that you will enjoy it.

THE PEARL HARTS WEBSITE