Helen - "Dead shark II"

Helen have announced their sophomore album, Linda's Head. It's their first release in over a decade.

You might best know Liz Harris for her work as Grouper, her ambient, dream-folk project under which she's been releasing some of the best ethereal music of the last two decades. She's also a member of the band Helen (which also features bassist Scott Simmons, of Eat Skull, and Eternal Tapestry drummer Jed Bindeman) and their lone album, The Original Faces, was one of my favorite albums of 2015. Today, the band announced a follow-up record will be out in October and they shared two new songs. "Dead shark II" is more of the lo-fi and shoegazey goodness we were treated to on the trio's debut LP with blown-out guitar work resembling decayed jangle-pop that buzzes with a resounding warmth. The press releases goes on to describe the album by saying: "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." Harris' vocals are still rife with their dreamy warble, but the atmosphere of the music is a noticeably different setting with more drive and melody pushing the sound towards more structure.

Linda's Head is out October 8.