To all those who believed Helen to be a one-and-done (well, two if you count the 7”) anomaly, I present… Liz Harris has spent the best part of the 21st century making dreamstate ambi-noise as Grouper, sometimes verging into dreampop territory but mostly focusing upon the refinement of the grainy oeuvre she’s created for herself. Helen, in which she’s joined by Scott Simmons and Jed Bindeman, sees her scratch an itch she can’t quite reach by other means. ‘Bedroom dreampop’ just about sums it up, but does it a little disservice also - there’s plenty out there taking aim at such ambitions, but few land the shot as well as the trio do here. In the first instance, the level of lo-fi fuzz is perfectly rendered, something I’d mostly put down to Harris’ expert instinct for textures and tones, and works so well in the context of the group - in other words, they *sound* exactly right. Then there’s the songwriting economy, short, sharp bursts of sometimes jangling, sometimes maudlin melody that condense the ‘cathedral of sound’ dynamics of shoegaze into keening, addicting songs that place melody and feeling on an even keel, a device perhaps learned from Harris’ kinship with Roy Montgomery (remember she issued his Scenes From A South Island, and they shared a split in 2010). Mostly, though, there’s the sense that the people making this music are fully immersed in the experience, a love-letter of sorts to the form, and fully sympathetic to its function. Bedroom pop/dreampop/shoegaze are hardly in short supply at the moment, but what about this for an idea - how about that same idea just done very well? Helen get it and get it very right.
FFO: Grouper, April Magazine, Marine Time Keepers, Hydroplane, MBV, Roy Montgomery
