When last I reviewed a Hannah Wicklund record on these pages, it was back in 2019 and she had her band The Stepping Stones backing her.
This time around, “The Prize” sees her effectively singing with Greta Van Fleet, as she is joined on the record by Sam Kiszka of the band, who has produced the album and plays bass, keys and organ on the record. They are also accompanied by Daniel Wagner (also of GVF) on drums.
As you might imagine, then, this is a record that doesn’t do small. Everything thinks big here. Everything soars.
“Hell In The Hallway”, opens in a cinematic way, as if to underline that this is not your conventional blues record. You can’t escape, though that she’s a brilliant singer, is Wicklund and always was. Primal one minute, ethereal the next.
That’s even more the case with the piano opening of “Witness”. Fragile verses explode into the chorus as if designed to show the extremes of all this, and the guitar solo is an interesting one too.
More than anything else, though, this is such a sonically captivating record. Usually, you can pack these things with references to what they sound like, that’s not the case here, in fairness. “Hide And Seek” rather underlines that, even when “Lost Love” rather strips things down, at least initially, it still sounds grandiose.
Yet, there’s a beauty here too. “Song Birds Sing” is as gentle as anything from Laurel Canyon, and is a magnificent vehicle for Wicklund’s voice, which is effectively an instrument in itself.
She uses it so well elsewhere too. Notably on the string-laden title track where she talks about “being the woman I want to be” and if most of these sound important for want of a better word, then that’s true on the heavy blues lick of “Can’t Get Enough” which, even for this album sounds huge.
“Intervention” has a touch of country going on, and a hook line of “I betrayed myself”.It sounds like she has no intention of doing it again.
Writing this so close to the start of the new year gives the break-up song “Dark Passenger” an extra resonance perhaps, given that it starts with the thought: “Happy New Year’s Day, let me get out of your way”.
And the last one “Sun To Sun” essentially continues the “heavy” vibe. That’s not to say this is a metal album or anything of the sort, but simply that they all seem to have been conceived at 3 am deep in some crisis or other.
And even with the Greta Van Fleet influence this time, there’s one thing that remains constant. The record is fantastic. The last time I reviewed one of Wicklund’s albums I gave it 9/10, this one is just as good. She was just 22 back then, and now with the added maturity, you can expect to see her soar even higher than one of these songs.
Rating 9/10
