Taylor Momsen has never been one to hide from the dark - and her band's new album doesn't start now.
Dear God, the fifth studio album from The Pretty Reckless, is out today, June 26, via Fearless Records. It's their first full-length in five years, and it may be the most honest thing they've ever made.
"Dear God is desperation set to music," Momsen said of the album's title track. "When life gets that physical, that brutal, you leave your body and start begging something bigger than yourself to pull you out. That space between heaven and hell isn't a metaphor. It's somewhere you actually live."
She went further in conversation with Kerrang!, pulling back the curtain on where the album truly came from. "I was in a purgatory state - so down, yet I felt there was a light over there, but I couldn't figure out how to get there," she shared. "It was a desperate headspace to live in, where I had to make a very conscious choice whether I was going to live or I was going to die. I wanted salvation. I wanted out of where I was. But the reality is there is light to be found."
The title track's chorus captures that cry plainly: "Dear God, can you lift me up, can you take me higher / Dear God, can you lift me up, keep me from a fire."
The 14-track album was built around diaristic songwriting, vulnerability, and artistic freedom - and that shows up in every corner of it. On "Love Me," Momsen described reaching a point of being "so hollowed out that you start bargaining with God, not even for happiness, just for proof that someone sees you." "That's what this song is," she said. And late in the record, "Devil in Disguise (Michelle's Song)" pays quiet tribute to a friend lost too soon - one of the album's most intimate and heartbreaking moments.
The release comes at a milestone moment for the band. Lead single "For I Am Death" hit No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, giving The Pretty Reckless the record for most chart-toppers by any woman-fronted act in the chart's 44-year history.
A headline world tour kicks off July 10 in Raleigh, North Carolina, running through North America before heading to Europe and the UK through December.
Dear God is available now on all streaming platforms. For anyone who has ever looked up and asked for a way out of the darkness - this one was made for you.
