From Iceland — Hera - Don’t Play This

Published October 2, 2005

Not since Spinal Tap’s Shark Sandwich has someone lobbed a softball like this to a reviewer—the abysmal cover featuring a smiling, topless girl, (the picture cuts just at the top of the breasts to be playful), does not help the tag line “Don’t Play This” at all. But Hera and the performers on her album don’t deserve the bile that the cover raises. True, she has a song about chocolate, “Chocolate, it melts the pain away,” that won’t win her any songwriting competitions. But she seems earnest enough, and she has a crystal clear voice. And a lot of people don’t listen to words anyway. And maybe twelve year olds need a topless role model.