Helen - The Original Faces (Kranky Records) 2015
9
Picture yourself wandering a deserted stretch of highway on a cold, autumnal night and chancing upon a burned-out motor car piled up next to the road, long since abandoned and left to rust and spoil in whatever the elements could throw at it. Raking through the stoor and detritus accumulated down the years within this forgotten vehicle, you flick open the car’s old cassette player and out pops a battered C90 cassette. And on that knackered old tape, you might just hear the debut album from Helen.
Grouper’s Liz Harris has decided that it’s about time for some serious rocking out and has gathered together Scott Simmons and Jed Bindeman to form a rock and roll power trio heavily indebted to the unfortunately termed “shoegazing” movement, but with enough ragged guitar workouts to evoke halcyon memories of pre-grunge groups of twenty-five years hence. At their most piledriving and furious, Helen sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain’s wall of melodic noise topped off with wistful Slowdive vocals. Tracks crash into each other, interspersed with loops of queasy guitar spillage, often sounding as though someone has spliced these songs together with glue and sticky tape in plaid-shirted evocation of a long-distant summer night.
A remembrance of youth shared in making a glorious sound and a fitting next phase for the haunted realms of Harris’s songwriting.