Music Review: "Linda's Head" by Helen

Grouper gazes toward shoegaze!

"Linda's Head" album cover

Helen’s sophomore album “Linda’s Head” shows how the band can translate Liz Harris’ ambient sensibilities into a rock atmosphere, which elevates an otherwise middling shoegaze record into something unique.

Helen is a shoegaze band formed by Harris andcollaborators Jed Bindemann and Scott Simmons. Harris is known for her extremely fuzzy, dense ambient work as Grouper and other aliases, which always plunge the listener into an intensely atmospheric world. Whether it’s music for listening to while rustling through leaves on an overcast day (“Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill”) or for listening to while constantly reflecting in a dark room (“Cover the Windows and Walls”), Harris always finds a way to bring a vibe and atmosphere in her work that not many ambient artists can replicate.

The main complaint I have with this album wholly addresses this, though, and that would be how overall nondescript the vibe is here. The album doesn’t ever stick to a theme or specific sound she’s working on. Instead, itfocuses on her ability to use her fuzzy powers on shoegaze, which would be dull without it.

The front half of the album is affected immensely by this. “Starline” and “Endless Sky” are very beachy sounding shoegaze tracks that usually wouldn’t be of huge note unless someone was trying to find songs to play while by the shore.

With Harris’ additions, though, the tracks suddenly become foggy and interesting. Under another artist, adding any sort of fuzz and haze would make them sound like an obvious fake lo-fi effect. With Harris, though, she finds a way to make it sound like you went to the beach on a foggy and misty day and decided to have fun in the water anyways.

The album does continue with some bangers, though. The highlight here is the song “Darkblue,” which is a beautiful, fuzzy, noisy beast that I would envision Harris doing if she pivoted to shoegaze. The whole song feels like you’re in a rainy day in the fall before the bad thunderstorms happening, but the anticipation of the thunder and heavy rain still looms over your head (and umbrella).

The rest of the album’s notable tracks lie in the back half, with “Black and Quiet Love” and “Stay with Me” both being gorgeous tunes that I would put on a day between rainy and overcast. The fogginess of both songs combined with Harris’ voice is almost calm compared to how the guitars themselves sounded like they were foreboding.

“Black and Quiet Love” specifically is a song I come back to a lot because of the guitar. Usually, Harris makes the guitar sound unrecognizable in her more famous ambient works. This song, though, is presented less hazily and almost feels like a warning to the listener.

Overall, the entire album is good, but some of the songs here feel like they’re just regular shoegaze songs with a Liz Harris coat on top of it. That’s not an entirely bad thing, but songs like “Darkblue” show how transformative Harris can be under the right shoegazing conditions. I personally think a lot of people would enjoy it if they gave it a chance.

If you find yourself enjoying this album when listening, I suggest listening to works by Grouper or hazy space rock inspired shoegaze bands like Magnog (“More Weather”) and Loop (“Heaven’s End”).