What really makes the album feel like a salvage quilt of the past and the now is the found material. They’ve always had a knack for sample havoc, like on 2021’s “Tu Tu Neurotic,” which sped up the divine trills of Opus III’s 1992 new-age house classic “It’s A Fine Day” into an urgent hymn of nightcored la-la-las. They litter the album with a haul of unexpected allusions, from the clipped Skrillex screams of “Halo” to the ASMR audio on “Rllynice.” The aquamarine synth lead on “STUNN” hits like a RUSTIE sugar high. The hauntingly pretty “Shadow” rewires a wispily woeful acoustic ballad uploaded to Instagram by Victoria Davidoff into a torrent of witch-house bass. “I’d kill to watch you sit around,” she moans, every syllable convulsing like a dizzy cyborg. It sounds built for a cursed Jane Schoenbrun film.
Bragging about making music that’s shockingly new and then stuffing the album with throwback indie and electronic flickers is a bait and switch. It’s as if by mashing all their favorite influences, they wanted to somehow transcend their pasts, make a mutant rodeo out of sacred relics. It doesn’t entirely work, because the way they combine analog and synthetic, fried beats and raw feels, isn’t a new aesthetic. But the passion seeps through, with melodies and songwriting that’s hookier and more inventive than most of the hyper-rock swarm. To really build out their vision, LL could use more memorable lyrics. They lean toward amorphous sensations and experiences—lovesick languor, existential inertia, power dynamics—with details blurred enough for anyone to fill the gaps to fit their own circumstances. Occasionally, they’ll stumble on something specific or weird, like the way Dillon offhandedly declares, “I came inside to say/Everyone here’s a tweaker,” on “Ether,” and pleads, “You make lots of money/Could you buy me like a little toy?” on “Sinamen,” before the track flips into a bleep-bloop maelstrom. The storytelling feels sidelined in service of making big, bittersweet anthems.
Before LL, the Hellp cultivated so much lore it almost dwarfed the music. Dillon and Lucy had humble origin stories as construction and grocery store workers who slept in cars or on “rat-infested floors.” Their early music allegedly served as inspo for Frank Ocean’s Blonde era and was co-signed by Kanye West. Then there was their proximity to influencers like tastemaker Luka Sabbat, and their wild videos, like one where Dillon runs down an endless road in the Arizona desert, stripping naked and collapsing on the concrete. This album unravels like a long, spasming, victorious exhale. It feels as much like a love letter to certain inspirations as a love letter to their growth as artists, remembering the early days when they were slumming it out and recognizing where they are now. After so many years of waiting, the Hellp finally delivered their manifesto, and it’s sweeter than most of the “indie sleaze” they mistakenly got lumped beside.
