A true story:

We stood beneath the awning taking thirsty drags on our meticulously hand-rolled cigarettes, listening to the first song. AJ stubbed his out, unwilling to brave the spiteful, freezing rain, and said, “I like his voice.”

So let’s start there: if nothing else, The Heartless Bastards’ debut Stairways and Elevators gives the world Erika Wonnerstrom’s voice. At once husky, soulful, insecure, howling, feminine and weathered, every track on this album has a Wonnerstrom Moment, where the vocals grab your ear and all of a sudden you realize that the song, which you’d been sort of losing interest in, is fucking amazing.

AJ got it all wrong, of course, but it’s excusable: her voice seems to encompass every characteristic of good rock singing at the same time, and if it comes across confusingly strong on occasion, that’s because she’s done her homework so well. She emphasizes it when it cracks on a too-high note, something PJ Harvey’s too accomplished to let happen and Sleater-Kinney are too damn good to. It takes a special kind of lady to attempt a Junior Kimbrough song last performed by Buddy fucking Guy (“Done Got Old”), and Wonnerstrom nails it.

There is, of course, some music behind that voice, and when the Bastards match the riffs with Wonnerstrom’s lungs, the results are face-melting. Peep if you will the late-album highlight “Swamp Song,” when over a two-chord hell-raiser Wonnerstrom coos/screeches: “My feet won’t move an inch / 'cuz my feet are frozen.” The riffs tell a different story, of course, rocking a tempo that seems to imply dry-heaving and dancing in equal measure. Three minutes in, the tempo changes again for a pogo-thrash breakdown, fire-starter build-up and one last tongue down the throat of that opening riff.

The lyrics keep pace: over rolling drums, “New Resolution” drops contradictions and revelations like, “My new resolution is not to care what anyone thinks of me / Because I don’t even like myself half the time.” The obvious comparison here is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: diminutive woman with epic voice fronts two dudes on songs that seem culled from diary entries, heroic rock ensues. But the Yeahs relied on Karen O’s caterwauling hysterics and Nick Zinner’s careening chops; what the Bastards have at their core is a songwriting spirit rooted in equal parts of Robert Johnson, Black Flag and Sam Cooke.

The album has misses, like the aptly titled snoozer “Piano Song,” but even the filler moves with urgency thanks to --- you guessed it --- Wonnerstrom’s vocals. And if there’s another song this year that makes me feel half as sure of the all-encompassing power of rock and roll as “Runnin” or “Gray,” the universe may have to expand to contain all its glory.

Okay, that might be more than a little hyperbolic. But it’s hard not to be when an album so effortlessly reaches to the vanguards of 20th century music and pulls them down to an everyday level; it is all just music, after all, so why shouldn’t the Heartless Bastards strive to place themselves right among the classics? And, while I’m certainly not suggesting that the Heartless Bastards in any way surpass or match the works of their influences, they do a helluva lot more than simply channel their spirit. They have a spirit all their own, and they make it relevant to the gray skies and smokestacks of their Midwestern home, of the poverty on the outskirts of Appalachia, of the way Wal-Marts smell, of spiteful, freezing rain, of meticulously hand-rolled cigarettes. It’s hard not to be a little thankful.