Helen's 'Linda's Head' Is Eleven Years of Patience and Not One Wasted Minute
We covered “Dead shark II” in August and said the chemistry sounded undiminished. The full record proves the point and then goes further: Linda’s Head is not a band remembering how it used to sound, it is a band that got better in the gap.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Scott Simmons plays bass like a tide rather than a pulse — it rises under “Starline” and never announces itself, which is exactly why the song lifts. Jed Bindeman’s drums are mixed close and unfussy, room sound and reverb tails left in rather than scrubbed out. The Spatial Dynamics: this is the rare shoegaze record that gets clearer as it gets louder. Liz Harris’s guitar and voice occupy the same band of the spectrum and she lets them blur, but the lowercase-titled miniatures — “endless Sky,” “darkblue,” “black and quiet love” — are built on pop chord changes that survive the weather. Pitchfork’s Sasha Geffen put it best: it “retains the essential ethos of the obliterating wave. Nothing stays dry under these thunderclouds.”
Standout Performance
Harris, on guitar, doing the least. Across ten tracks she almost never reaches for a bigger gesture than the song needs, and the restraint is the whole trick — which makes “Canyon,” the eight-minute closer, hit like a held breath released. First Floor called it “the long and slow exhale at the end of the journey.”
Why It’s Certified
Kranky has been releasing records like this for three decades and still knows when to get out of the way. Spectrum Culture scored it 84%: “Each song is like a little glowing jewel, but strung together, the overall effect feels logical and complete.” Backseat Mafia went 90/100 for its “gradually tightening emotional grip.” The Quietus, more bluntly: “It’s Isis’ Oceanic for Slowdive fans.”