What actually makes the album really feel like a salvage quilt of the previous and the now is the discovered materials. They’ve all the time had a knack for pattern havoc, like on 2021’s “Tu Tu Neurotic,” which sped up the divine trills of Opus III’s 1992 new-age home basic “It’s A High quality Day” into an pressing hymn of nightcored la-la-las. They litter the album with a haul of sudden allusions, from the clipped Skrillex screams of “Halo” to the ASMR audio on “Rllynice.” The aquamarine synth lead on “STUNN” hits like a RUSTIE sugar excessive. The hauntingly fairly “Shadow” rewires a wispily woeful acoustic ballad uploaded to Instagram by Victoria Davidoff right into a torrent of witch-house bass. “I’d kill to observe you sit round,” she moans, each syllable convulsing like a dizzy cyborg. It sounds constructed for a cursed Jane Schoenbrun movie.
Bragging about making music that’s shockingly new after which stuffing the album with throwback indie and digital sparkles is a bait and change. It’s as if by mashing all their favourite influences, they needed to in some way transcend their pasts, make a mutant rodeo out of sacred relics. It doesn’t fully work, as a result of the best way they mix analog and artificial, fried beats and uncooked feels, isn’t a brand new aesthetic. However the ardour seeps by way of, with melodies and songwriting that’s hookier and extra creative than a lot of the hyper-rock swarm. To essentially construct out their imaginative and prescient, LL may use extra memorable lyrics. They lean towards amorphous sensations and experiences—lovesick languor, existential inertia, energy dynamics—with particulars blurred sufficient for anybody to fill the gaps to suit their very own circumstances. Often, they’ll discover one thing particular or bizarre, like the best way Dillon offhandedly declares, “I got here inside to say/Everybody right here’s a tweaker,” on “Ether,” and pleads, “You make a lot of cash/Might you purchase me like somewhat toy?” on “Sinamen,” earlier than the observe flips right into a bleep-bloop maelstrom. The storytelling feels sidelined in service of constructing large, bittersweet anthems.
Earlier than LL, the Hellp cultivated a lot lore it virtually dwarfed the music. Dillon and Lucy had humble origin tales as development and grocery retailer staff who slept in automobiles or on “rat-infested flooring.” Their early music allegedly served as inspo for Frank Ocean’s Blonde period and was co-signed by Kanye West. Then there was their proximity to influencers like tastemaker Luka Sabbat, and their wild movies, like one the place Dillon runs down an limitless highway within the Arizona desert, stripping bare and collapsing on the concrete. This album unravels like a protracted, spasming, victorious exhale. It feels as very like a love letter to sure inspirations as a love letter to their development as artists, remembering the early days once they had been slumming it out and recognizing the place they’re now. After so a few years of ready, the Hellp lastly delivered their manifesto, and it’s sweeter than a lot of the “indie sleaze” they mistakenly received lumped beside.
