Recap Heartless Bastards at Turner Hall

I count myself as a Heartless Bastards fan, but I may only be a lover of “The Mountain,” the smoldering title track from the band’s 2009 breakthrough album. An aptly named colossus composed of slow-moving molasses, “The Mountain” nicks the riff from The White Stripes’ “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” and melts it with a disintegrating slide-guitar lick that swings wildly as the song lurches forward with the inevitability of famine and death on a desolate, Depression-era plain.

When the Bastards played “The Mountain” late into its set Monday night at Turner Hall, it predictably towered over the other songs, which are reliably thick and likeably punchy, but ultimately a touch generic and same-y in the way that most modern blues-rock of The Black Keys school tends to be. The Bastards’ pared-down, pounding boogie rock works better in small doses, like on a mixtape or at closing time in a bar; hearing it for more than an hour is wearying, like painting a never-ending wall a dull shade of gray.

Much of the Bastards’ material justifies itself as window dressing for Erika Wennerstrom knockout vocals, which were the highlight of the night by a mile. What sets Wennerstrom apart as a singer is her sense of ease; there’s none of the embarrassingly histrionic throat and facial gymnastics you get from a lot of contemporary blues belters. She merely steps up to the microphone and lazily yawns out a caramel-coated Billie Holiday drawl that’s all bedroom eyes and ballsy swagger.

Even on faster numbers like “Out At Sea” and “Early In the Morning,” Wennerstrom seethed with the bottomless rage of an elderly couple gently wiling away an afternoon on a porch swing. An acoustic set proved an ideal showcase for Wennerstrom, stripping away the Bad Company-style flexing of her three-piece backing band and putting her voice front and center. Only a blazing cameo by violinist Zy Orange Lyn threatened to steal the show, but Wennerstrom quickly re-claimed the spotlight with an understated grittiness that distinguishes The Heartless Bastards from countless other bands mired in blues nights at sports bars.