Review Summary: Grease for the wheels of the shopping cart in the shelf of the supermarket of whimsical millennial slacker rock
I think the arc of Helvetia’s career can be best summarized like this: the band took itself very very seriously in the beginning and slowly began to lighten up and exhibit a bright sense of humor in its records starting with 2012’s “Nothing In Rambling” and continuing with 2015’s “Dromomania”.
With the very notable exception of 2015’s “A Dot Running For The Dust”, Helvetia have followed this trajectory from serious to relaxed in a decade-long exhale, which is personally one of the most satisfying career progressions I’ve ever seen. Never high-strung, the early records are glimmering with innocence and teary eyed joy and sadness in equal measures. They bite deep into this hypnotic, cereberal sound that feels like Jason’s take on Duster at times. Albums from 2006 to 2011 often feature long compositions with carefully planned arrangements and buildups, and invite you to take the record as a whole experience.
On the other hand, the later records like this one, have this fun and slightly camp feeling of a guy chasing the high of the catchiest, most replayable slacker rock song he can make using the equipment at his disposal. For instance, 2008’s “The Acrobats” is a 12-song, 52-minute study playlist of slow-burn meditative jams while 2020’s “Fantastic life” is a 14-song, 33-minute film reel of fast paced, crunchy, tight pop numbers.
One constant across Helvetia’s entire career is a bold, unencumbered approach of experimentalism, often taking liberties I’ve heard in very few other bands and applying a unique direction to them that I find very captivating and endearing. Jason seems more eager to try something different over rehashing the same idea twice. Even so, many of these tracks seem to be nursing the same urge to lay down a catchy tune that’ll get you singing and air guitaring to the song in no time. The marriage of his desire for new sonic approaches and his desire to create tunes that resonate with the brain and encourage replayability make records like these very prized to me, and it helps that his approach to sound design is very tasteful (tasty) to my ears. The way every instrument is presented in the mix here is exactly in line with the way I like things to sound, and the interplay between them on these songs, sonically and musically, is damn near mouth watering.
Not every song is a winner here but Lake Of Flames, Laugh Track, I Forgot Who I Was, the title track, The People, False Steps, Squirmy Blanket, and The Shady satisfy my pop urges. It’s hard to overstate just how catchy some of this stuff is. That’s 8 out of 17 pop bangers: other songs flex different muscles, utilizing Helvetia/Jason’s more experimental approach to songwriting. The record is presented as a full piece in classic Helvetia fashion, so I don’t have any definitive skips on here. I’m not crazy about Pebbled or Dubster, but I actually like them. They’re cool slices of experimental psychedelia while not offering anything extremely catchy to latch onto like some of the other stuff on here.
Overall I would say this is an interesting mesh of some of Helvetia’s more lowkey, witty hook-chorus tracks and their heavy hearted material, with just enough sonic experimentation to jarr you into the footholds of the absolutely stellar pop moments and appreciate both sides of the record. Worst criticism I can give it is that it sounds too “demo” y but I think I’m just the kind of person that really likes that kind of sound and feel when it comes to music in the rock idiom. Favorite song is Laugh Track.
