The debut EP from The Pretty Reckless is available now. It features their single “Make Me Wanna Die,” two new digital tracks and bonus song “Zombie” available only on the physical version sold at Warped Tour and Hot Topic stores.

With these four songs, Taylor Momsen and her band give fans a preview of what’s to come on their forthcoming full-length album, Light Me Up — an unflinchingly honest chronicle of Momsen’s experiences, filtered through her unique point of view. The songs, all written by Momsen and Ben Phillips with their producer Kato Khandwala, run the gamut of emotions, alternating at times between seething rage and a bruised vulnerability.

The songs tackle everything from romantic insecurity (the full-throttle rager “Make Me Wanna Die,” which also appears on the soundtrack to the film Kick-Ass), to despair (“You”), to how working non-stop can you make you feel like one of the un-dead (“Zombie”). Momsen pushes back against the haters on “Light Me Up” and asks how far you have to go to get forgiveness on “Going Down.” With her growly, world-weary alto, Momsen can do it all: garage-rock rave-ups (“Miss Nothing”), punchy blues-rock stompers (“My Medicine,” “Since You’re Gone”), as well as emotional power ballads (“Just Tonight”) and lovely acoustic guitar and string-driven numbers (“You”).

Visit ThePrettyReckless.com for more info and stay tuned for the full-length release coming later this year. The band is about to head out on Warped Tour, and they are giving fans the chance to design their tour poster on Buzznet.

Thanks to Veronica @ totalassault.com

Alex Deleon from The Cab talks Taylor Momsen & The Pretty Reckless

Are there any bands that you haven’t worked with that you’re looking forward to playing with on the Warped Tour?
[…] The Pretty Reckless with Taylor Momsen. She’s got a really unique voice. Like a lot of people who are actresses try to make albums and they all don’t have good voices. But her voice is really unique, and it’s got this really cool tone and rasp to it, so I’m looking forward to see what she does.

I wonder how she has time between doing all of that and doing Gossip Girl.
I think she’s focusing on music right now for the summer. I heard she’s doing a U.K. tour after Warped, so she’s really focusing on her band.

Have you worked with her before?
No. Never met her. Looking forward to. I hope so.

Thanks Taylor Momsen Source for the headsup.

The limits of control.

Hello, upper east siders! Spotted: Little J releasing a record with her band, The Pretty Reckless. The biggest surprise? It’s actually good. Xoxo.

IN A CORNER booth at Remedy Diner on New York City’s Lower East Side, the same place we met six months ago for her NYLON Japan cover story, Taylor Momsen sips from a steaming skim latte, her long, center-parted blond hair shrouding most of her face. The first time, we shared cheese fries while she talked candidly about her acting career and bubbled over with excitement when the conversation turned toward her band, the Pretty Reckless, and their forthcoming record, which was still very much “in the works”. Now the as-yet-untitled album is set to come out this summer, and it’s the reason that we’re meeting again in the same booth, at the same diner, with another order of cheese fries.

This time, Momsen, Who says she has “absolutely” fulfilled the hopes she had for the album, is joined by her guitarist, Ben Phillips (bassist Mark Damon and drummer Jamie Perkins are absent). “She was completely in charge from one end to the other”, says Phillips, who co-wrote the record with her. “She’s very diligent – one might use the word pedantic at points. We could spend 18 hours editing a track. She truly doesn’t know the meaning of downtime”. At this, Momsen smirks contentedly.

Lots of thing – big and small – have changed since our last meeting: In addition to finishing the recording, Momsen just shot her first music video and assembled a permanent band that will accompany her on this summer’s Warped Tour. Also new are her “fucking cool John Lennon sunglasses”, behind which her heavily lined and shadowed lids are barely visible. She says they were her dad’s and that she likes them a lot, and I believe her because she opts to wear them for the entirety of our conversation.

“[The album is about] sex and drugs and religion and politics and arguments”, explains Momsen, dipping a fry in ketchup and popping it into her mouth. “But whatever I felt when I was writing it isn’t what I need people to get out of it, exactly. Whatever they want to take from it is what the songs are about. My intention doesn’t really matter”: Momsen cities Oasis, the Beatles, and Audioslave as longtime musical influences but adds that her producer introduces her to Marilyn Manson during the recording process. After announcing this, she chants a string of lyrics from Manson’s “This Is The New Shit” and falls back into the booth, giggling.

On the album’s first single, “You Make Me Wanna Die”, Momsen’s voice growls over dense guitars (“Take me, I’m alive / Never was a girl with a wicked mind”) but switches to a haunting purr for the bridge: “I can see your eyes / Your eyes”. “This is he first time ever that I’ve been able to choose the people I’m working with”, she says. “When you’re an actress, you’re chosen for a role. It’s hard to find people who can reflect your vision and make it come to life”. For Momsen, it was essential that she be able to pick her producers and have creative control of her videos. “Otherwise I wouldn’t do it”, she explains. “I’d rather put it out myself than have people (at a label) dictate what my songs are going to sound like. Fuck that: I’m the artist”.

It’s been a painstaking process for Momsen, but she says the long hours were nothing new and ultimately satisfying. “It just feels like a success to finish it”, she says. “Past that, it’s all really kind of bullshit. If you’re in this for record sales and fame, then you don’t really like music”. So how did Momsen celebrate once the album was finished? “Those are things”, she answers coyly, “that I don’t say in magazines”.

Thanks so much to Septimiu for the magazine scans.

GALLERY LINK
Magazine Scans » Nylon June / July 2010

THE TRANSITION from actor to musician is extrmely hit and miss. You could be looking at the next Jared Leto or you could, Gof forbid, be witnessing the next incarnation of Dogstar, the ill-fated bar band fronted by Matrix actor Keanu Reves. Tonight, this dingle West London venue is at mazimum capacity as three quarters of The Pretty Reckless make their way onto the stage. The young, mostly female crowd barely een acknowledge their presence, thouh, as many of them fiddle nervously with their cameras and wait with bated breath. It’s clear who they’ve come to see tonight and when TV’s Gossip Girl actress-turned-frontwoman Tayor Momsen finally charges onto her first ever UK stage, she’s greeted with cheers, screams and a lightning story of camera flashes.

Within the very first song any doubts about whether or not she can convincingly fron a band are dead and buried. She is physically and vocally everything that a frontwoman could wish to be. Her voice alone demands attention – the perfect balance of radio-friendly harmony and husky grunge-growl echoes that of a young Courtney Love – and while the other members of the band are awesome musicians, competing with Taylor’s presence and charisma is pointless. Heavy riffs and wailing solos rock the ting room and the crowd are at the Gossip-Girl-gone-grunge’s mercy as tehy shut along with the choruses of Make Me Wanna Die and Zombie.

Armed with superb voice and some killer tunes, tonight Taylor has proved beyong doubt that she’s much more than just an actress playing the part of a rock star.

Source: Thank you so much to ninjarawr.

GALLERY LINK
Magazine Scans » Kerrang Magazine – June 2010