I got a jones like Indiana for ZZ Ward.
ZZ Ward is a problem.
If this EP, Eleven Roses, was an auction, I'd have been broke long before the auctioneer declared, "Sold!" By the time I get to the second track, Got it Bad, and she delivers
"We can be on a park bench; make it make sense in the middle of a crowded room."
I'm hers. She opens the track with that, and I'm just sitting there thinking, "Oh. Shit. Okay."
And just when I start to shake off the trance in the second verse, here she comes with
"Your tongue is like sin. You always get in."
Christ.
All this, against a series of beats this rich?
The hook on Got it Bad starts with "That boy is trouble. Yeah, he's tried, charged, and wanted." And all I can think is how much (of the best kind of) trouble she is, and how much (wonderful) trouble I'm in.
Through two tracks, and I haven't been this excited about a first listen in a long time. And she's not even to the promo'd single yet.
Cinnamon Stix sounds like what'd happen if The Black Keys and Grace Potter went thirds on a baby who, 25 years later, released a single.
Even the stripped, acoustic tracks connect. Til the Casket Drops maintains the same dark pace the full studio cuts before it deliver. And Last Love Song lets me know that when ZZ Ward isn't just strutting all over a record, you still don't want to turn it down.
Download this EP. Do it. I'm not asking politely. Go.
