Skullcrusher – And Your Song is Like a Circle (Dirty Hit) (13th Floor Album Review)
The songs on Skullcrusher’s sophomore album, And Your Song is Like a Circle, lurk on the periphery. The more focus you try to give them, the faster they slip away.
New York singer-songwriter Helen Ballentine, whose delicate blend of hushed folk and ambient textures betray the irony of her death metal moniker, follows up Quiet The Room (2022) with an icy, gossamer mood piece that is at times as comforting as it is fleeting. Impermanence, if not the central theme, is at least my main takeaway. These are songs that cease or crumble just when you think they’re about to surge.
Though recorded piecemeal over the past three years, its 10 tracks are tightly at one with each other, mining the fragility of human experience and memory – or at least that’s the vibe I sense. Much of the lyrics are drenched in reverb and tricky to make out. Early singles March and Dragon, which lead off the record, are great examples of what Skullcrusher does best – conjuring an expansive sense of calm through her voice and sparse, hypnotic soundscapes, anchored by piano.
But by the fifth track, Changes, the record starts to lose shape, the dreamy turns a little dreary, and it never quite recovers. I think each of these 10 songs would play stronger pulled onto a mixtape. Individually each song is a delicate storm, but together they are a blinding white out.
I stumbled onto Skullcrusher’s 2020 debut EP during one of the Covid lockdowns. It was an alluring, insular and brief escape from the anxious daily cocktail of 1pm outbreak updates and work-from-home weirdness. Places/Plans remains an evocative conduit to Covid life. By the time Quiet The Room was released, my world was fast and free again, and I struggled to find a place for Skullcrusher in it. And Your Song is Like a Circle has similar challenges.
Released for the American autumn, I expect it will make a fitting companion for shuffling through dying leaves and welcoming winter’s embrace. But here and now, on the eve of a Kiwi summer? Maybe save it for a day when you’re nursing sunburn and in desperate need of a cool, dark room.
Matthew Dallas
And Your Song is Like a Circle is out now on Dirty Hit Records
