Friday Night: The Pretty Reckless At House Of Blues

Photos by Marc Brubaker

​The Pretty Reckless
House of Blues Bronze Peacock Room
February 18, 2011

Satisfy your craving for more Momsen by checking out our slideshow.

The strangest thing about seeing The Pretty Reckless Friday night wasn't the fact that the show ended by 10 p.m., contained just 11 songs, or even that it was filled with boys and girls barely old enough to drive. It was the fact that we actually wished that lead singer Taylor Momsen wasn't so scantily clad.

Is this us ripping up our man card?

No doubt hitting the stage in a red sheer teddy, matching garters and six-inch old-school hooker boots shouldn't be a bad thing, but when it's a 17 year-old girl with more than enough vocal power to negate the need for a cheap auxiliary thrill, it's disconcerting. And compared to most of her influences and contemporaries, her get-up was quasi-tame.

Now we just sound prudish.

​Aftermath isn't sure if shame is the right word for watching an hour of Momsen, half-naked and writhing, in a small room with a crowd of tweens, teens and old creepers. We do know that the shock and titillation of it all went out the window by song two, and we were more interested in hearing her voice than waiting for a wardrobe malfunction.

Momsen has been blessed with a voice at least two decades older than she is. It's a husky, throaty bellow, not quite scream-y enough to be shrill. Imagine Avril Lavigne's 2003 voice with a nicotine tint. It comes in a jail-baiting image, part Runaways Cherie Currie and/or Courtney Love circa 1991, with a whole lot more skin showing.

Friday night's set list was almost all of Pretty Reckless' recent debut LP, Light Me Up, plus a cover of Audioslave's "Like A Stone," which, to give you an idea of just where her voice is at, Momsen nailed. The older girls in the crowd sang along to the 2003 radio hit; to the younger kids, Audioslave might as well be what supergroup Damn Yankees were to people Aftermath's age ten years ago.