Band: Helicopter Helicopter
Album: Great Big Meaningless
Label: Lunch Records
Released: November 2002
Catalog #: LR038
Rating (out of 10): 8
Great Big Meaningless, a repackaging of Helicopter Helicopter’s first two albums –Squids and Other Fishes (1998) and Analog & Electrical Fields (1999), is 60 minutes of woozy rock’n'roll bliss. It’s rare enough to find an entire album that is good from beginning to end, but getting two for the price of one fills you with that warm fuzzy feeling that usually results from two or three empty beer bottles.
Helicopter Helicopter’s songs are built on a solid foundation with the steady heartbeat of drums and pulsing basslines carrying the listener through a trippy tumult. Guitars shift from undulating drones to jagged attacks to poppy chord strumming and back again. All the while lead singers/co-founders Christopher Zerby and Julie Chadwick make great use of the guy/girl vocal dichotomy by harmonizing choruses, dueling on verses, and often just creating chaos singing lines over top one another. At points everything converges into a sludgy whirlpool, but then surfaces out the other side with a razor sharp clarity; a single drum snap or the ringing slice of a guitar bringing things back to order. The lyrics paint scenes that are complimentary to the music’s sense warping tendencies. The music inhabits a dark and seedy world of drugs, booze, sex, insects, sea life, street life, and violence. The bizarre yet somehow familiar scenes are like something out of a William S. Burroughs novel. Throughout these journeys the band makes you feel like both their confessor and co-conspirator as you stumble around their world disoriented, but enjoying the ride.
Not sure what you’d categorize H2 as. It’s too interesting and off kilter for the rock label, but perhaps a new useless genre like ‘post-rock’ would handle the job. Alternative is ridiculously played out, but it fits too. Whatever you want to call it this is a great album for those looking for something pleasantly twisted and moody. -John Lefler
Don’t miss tracks:
Great Big Meaningless
Lucky
Cadillac Drugs
Please Please Tito
Ever Since The Buzzards Moaned
Purchase:
Physical
-Your local brick’n'mortar record shop (You remember those, right?)
-Lunch Records
Digital
-eMusic
-iTunes
(Author’s note: In an effort for full disclosure the original version of this review ran in The Northeast Performer back in 2002 or 2003. They don’t archive their reviews on-line so I took the liberty of reclaiming my own work from my hard drive and giving it an overhaul because I really dig this album and it’s a quick way to jump-start this blog. -JL)
Checkout my review of Helicopter Helicopter’s last album Wild Dogs with X-Ray Eyes for the Boston Phoenix.
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