Helen

Helen

Linda's Head

Kranky

Linda’s Head is the first new album in over a decade by the Pacific Northwest trio of Liz Harris (guitar, vocals), Scott Simmons (bass), and Jed Bindeman (drums). Like its predecessor, 2015’s The Original Faces, the album maps a uniquely intimate and potent vision of bedroom dream pop. Theirs is a shoegaze of half-light and silhouettes, attuned to the shadowplay of melody, melancholy, and undertow.The record’s title is a refraction of meanings: a head in the clouds, a severance, a fictitious landform jutting into the sea. The music is similarly layered, both yearning and weathered, its edges blurred by years in the wild. Lyrics of waves, storms, and escape further shade the songs in subcurrents of desperation and beauty, tinged in the palette of the New Zealand pop underground. But at its core Helen’s chemistry is one of warmth and release, powered by the kinship of old friends in dark times.

Helen

The Original Faces

Kranky

***HELEN is a pop group from Oregon. LIZ HARRIS (vocals/lead guitar), JED BINDEMAN (drums/tambourine), SCOTT SIMMONS (bass/guitar), and HELEN (back up vocals). Originally started with the intention of being a thrash band, it turned into something else entirely. The Original Faces was recorded over a period of several years in Portland by the band members, their friends NICK, CHRIS and, largely, JUSTIN HIGGINS. Written together, some songs based on Liz and Scottʼs demos. (STREET DATE - 9/04/2015)