CD Review: Lita Ford – “Living like a Runaway”
SPV/Steamhammer
All Access Review: B+
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| Lita Ford - Living like a Runaway 2012 |
The recent upheaval in Lita Ford’s personal life certainly
has tongues wagging. And while gossipy fishwives may prattle on about the
details of her messy divorce from Jim Gillette, former singer for the
glam-metal dandies Nitro and a one-time Ford collaborator, the rest of the
metal community better not sleep on what is undoubtedly the most personal record
of her career, Living like a Runaway.
Coming off 2009’s delightfully sinful, and
uncharacteristically heavy, Wicked
Wonderland, Ford casts aside the S&M trappings and sexual bravado of
that record to unburden the heavy emotional baggage she’s obviously been
carrying around for way too long. Living
like a Runaway is the best kind of therapy, comprised of some of the strongest
and most daring material of her career. Nowhere to be found is the cute, cuddly
pop-metal of her breakout 1980s hit “Kiss Me Deadly.” Instead, the defiant Ford
– never a shrinking violet – works out her issues in a clutch of fierce,
swaggering rockers like the blazing single “Branded” and its slithering,
nastier cousins “Hate” and “The Mask” that, for all their righteous anger and seductively
metallic grooves, still boast gripping hooks galore. Lighter and more
introspective is the autobiographical title track, which features a
nimble-fingered guitar lead and wistfully nostalgic lyrics that speak to Ford’s
restless nature. And the soul-baring “Mother” is such a frank and affecting
acoustically-sketched letter from Ford to her children that it’s almost hard to
get through. But, it bears out, in stark detail, how the wounds of divorce heal
so slowly.
The bandages are ripped off on Living like a Runaway, and yet for all its bluster and ballsy
attitude, “Relentless” ought to have a chorus that isn’t so feathery and
disappointingly lightweight. Still, for the most part, producer and co-conspirator
Gary Hoey, Ford’s secret weapon, helps her stay focused on grinding out the
kind of tough, meaty riffs and high-flying solos that make “Devil in My Head”
such a brawling and candid exploration on the dual nature of man … or, in this
case, woman. Though Ford can’t help dipping her toes in the somewhat clichéd
and dated piece of ‘80s metal that is “Asylum,” its spandex-sporting kin “Love
2 Hate You” embeds wonderfully melodic hooks in a sparkling, yet bittersweet,
chorus that serves to remind everyone that Ford still knows her way around a pop
song.
In the past, Ford may have lived her life like a runaway, detached
and isolated like a troubled young girl who’s left home and hasn’t a clue where
to go or what to do next. Perhaps her time in the raw, adolescent punk girl
group The Runaways was, in and of itself, a similarly confusing exile. Whatever
the case, Ford, who’s been smashing her pretty blonde head against heavy
metal’s glass ceiling for years, has turned her present inner turmoil outward
and it fuels some of the edgiest, most provocative music she’s ever produced.
-
Peter Lindblad
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