Reckless Gossip

After more than two years of solid touring, The Pretty Reckless were a well oiled machine when it came time to record a follow-up to their breakthrough debut album Light Me Up. The line-up of guitarist Ben Phillips, bassist Mark Damon, drummer Jamie Perkins and irrepressible frontwoman Taylor Momsen won over the initial doubters through a brutal live show by refusing refusal to go any direction but their own. Raring to go and with new tracks already in the bag, the band quickly found recording more of a mission than anyone could have expected.

“This record took a lot,” explains Momsen. “We were working at this studio called Water Music in Hoboken New Jersey, and it was just our room, totally our vibe, our shit, and everything was flowing and it was great. Then Hurricane Sandy came in, wiped out the studio, took all our gear and guitars and recordings with it. So that was not fun! And from there we had to rebuild and find a new place to record because the studio was getting rebuilt. When we got a new studio we started recording again, and right as everything was starting to go great again our producer's wife passed [away] very suddenly overnight. She was like a mother to everyone in the band. It doesn't get any closer than that. I get choked up every time I talk about it – no one's over it yet. The record's dedicated to her. So that stopped everything again and then during that break we actually wrote the song Fucked Up World, and then ended up recording the final songs for the record – the last songs we recorded back at Water Studios – so it came full circle. But death makes a hurricane look like nothing. So we went through a lot of tragedy and a lot of hardships, but I think that you can hear it in the record.”

Beneath Momsen's media-baiting antics is a powerful voice that defies any misconceptions stemming from her acting background, proving that her Gossip Girl days are now far behind her. “It definitely was a struggle to overcome the actress-turned-musician stereotype. When really I was a musician way before I was an actress anyway. I play piano, I play guitar, I've been writing songs since I was a kid, I've been singing since before I can remember. But there definitely was a bit of struggle to get the public to see that. If you watch someone on a television show week after week playing a character, it's just that – it's a character. I look the same, I have the same face, I have the same voice, but I'm saying someone else's lines. So to get someone to see you outside of that definitely took some time. But it's been five years now since I acted and that transition has definitely happened. The people coming to shows aren't bringing Gossip Girl DVDs to get signed, you know? They're bringing records and they know every word to every song, they're there for the music.”