The Heat

The Heat (2007), Needtobreathe's second album, finds the band gaining a firmer grasp on their identity. True, they touch upon the usual reference points in contemporary rock — there’s the U2-ish big guitar washes, the Coldplay-like falsetto notes and so on. But singer/guitarist Bear Rinehart and his band mates manage to freshen up this formula by mixing guilelessness with a classic rock swagger. They can show real aggression, as the pummeling “Restless” makes clear, and the album’s title song finds them adept at slippery shuffles. The Heat’s best moments, though, are acoustic-slanted tracks like “Spare The Time” and “More Time,” which recalls the scruffy blues-rock of the Faces and the Black Crowes. All told, The Heat is a bid for mass appeal that manages to sound uncompromised in both its music and message.