Philly.com (Philadelphia Inquirer):
Heart
Red Velvet Car
(Sony Legacy ***)
The Wilson sisters of Heart were hard rock’s main mamas in the ’70s. Biting, clarion-clear vocalist Ann Wilson; harmony-singing, guitar-slinging sister Nancy; and the pair’s cleanly emotive brand of Zep-inspired folk-and-pop-metal melody ruled the charts. Eventually, they turned into a hair band doing Bic-flicking power ballads and became their own acoustic side project (Lovemongers) in between semiretirements.
Along with gearing up for a catalog overhaul, Heart recorded this stirring first new studio album in six years with warmly dramatic producer Ben Mink. The results are closer in cloyingly contagious melody and intimate lyricism to their early music, as in the cocksure “Queen City.” Yet the album’s mostly acoustic palette of cello, autoharp, banjo, and such allows songs such as the softly sonorous “Hey You” to take your breath away without ever eschewing their ability to rock out, as Heart does on the rousing “WTF.”