Heart

Along with debut albums from Foreigner and Boston, Heart's Dreamboat Annie ushered in the era of arena rock and Album Oriented Radio. The album sees the band's sister team of Nancy and Ann Wilson shrewdly pulling off a Led Zep role reversal. Lead singer Ann can shift from pop-thrush blandness to piercing shrieks with the stroke of a power chord, as she does on "Crazy on You" and "Magic Man." Little Queen ups the heavy quotient on hits like "Barracuda" with satisfying results, but murky folk-rock filler like "Dream of the Archer" cuts away at the record's overall power. The clunky Dog and Butterfly merely proves that some aspects of Led Zeppelin's legacy are better left alone. Magazine was a rush-job release of demo tapes, perpetrated when Heart skipped from the Canadian label Mushroom over to Epic.

Bebe Le' Strange shows strong signs of development: On "Even It Up," for example, Ann's vocals are bolstered by a snappy horn chart and firm beat. Greatest Hits -- Live kicks off well, pulling together the obvious high points -- and promptly falls apart, concluding with a turgid cover of Zeppelin's "Rock & Roll." Private Audition is a failed attempt at regaining Bebe's relatively adventurous spirit. Passionworks introduces the Wilsons' latter-day approach on cuts like "Allies" and "How Can I Refuse" -- supercharged bathos encased in a glossy production. Another label change, from Epic to Capitol, jump-started Heart's career a second time. Heart and Bad Animals are the repositories for half a dozen interchangeable power-ballad smashes, any one of which could break your heart or turn your stomach. Oddly enough, Rock the House "Live" is not the second-time-around summation fans might have expected. It's a realistic tour documentary, at best: a hodgepodge of minor album cuts and several resounding nonhits from the middling Brigade. Yet another live album, The Road Home, which collects the band's early hits, strips down the bombastic, arena-rock Heart of the '80s and reveals its sweet folkie soul. (M.C./A.B.)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide