The New York City-based, all-female indie trio Hel­lo Mary came togeth­er in 2019 – they’ve been build­ing a name for them­selves the US and are cur­rent­ly dip­ping their toe in the UK live cir­cuit. Hele­na Straight (guitar/vocals), Stel­la Wave (drums/vocals), and Mikaela Oppen­heimer (bass) are amass­ing plen­ty of inter­est with their fuzzed-out tracks that incor­po­rate, accord­ing to their press release, “alt-rock, shoegaze, and post-punk with a dark whim­sy” – although there’s quite evi­dent­ly plen­ty more going on. There’s more than a hint of prog adding a strong com­po­si­tion­al ele­ment, and the band shift between gen­res with confidence.

Hav­ing seen them at their first UK appear­ance at End of the Road fes­ti­val, I can attest to their rep­u­ta­tion as a great live band. They radi­ate what I’d term ‘cool ener­gy’ with Hele­na Straight assum­ing her front woman role and engag­ing with the crowd – the band are seem­ing­ly blown away by the – well-deserved – reac­tion to their sound and their energy.

Hel­lo Mary’s sec­ond album, Emi­ta Ox, to be released on Sep­tem­ber 13th, via Frenchkiss Records, presents a jour­ney as enig­mat­ic as its title suggests.

The open­ing track Float instant­ly com­mands atten­tion with its stat­uesque open­ing gui­tar riff that gets under the skin: there’s a ten­sion and a def­i­nite air of prog about this track – with tinges of Love – while the ethe­re­al vocals and mus­cu­lar bass coa­lesce to cre­ate some­thing quite oth­er­word­ly. That’s before the track makes a sud­den shift into anoth­er realm with screech­ing gui­tars and howl­ing vocals, before com­ing to a very abrupt and dra­mat­ic end.

Next is 0% which was released as a sin­gle, allow­ing the band to be let loose on those trib­al and pas­sion­ate vocals. Oppen­heimer’s dirty, fuzzy bass line crash­es in over an insis­tent gui­tar riff. One moment the har­monies sound sweet as pie but things change as drum­mer Wave’s vocals rise to a petu­lant scream. And as on the first track, Hel­lo Mary aren’t afraid to go from whim­si­cal riffs to shock-the-sys­tem heavy gui­tar dis­tor­tion. This pat­tern embeds itself into the album; Hel­lo Mary are adept at shift­ing mood and tem­po although at times songs feel they could be longer and ben­e­fit from allow them a lit­tle more breath­ing space.

Three takes the tem­po down a lit­tle: this track rep­re­sents anoth­er strand of Hel­lo Mary’s song­writ­ing skills and takes a more tra­di­tion­al path: there’s a trilling riff to lull the sens­es which resur­faces through­out the com­po­si­tion, giv­ing it a strong sense of struc­ture. Straight’s vocals and sub­lime har­monies are giv­en full rein.

The fifth track, Know­ing You, takes the con­trast between sweet­ness and strength to new heights. The over­all sound is sooth­ing and shoegazey, fea­tur­ing ethe­re­al Jane Weaver-style har­monies, lay­ered gui­tars, and psy­che­del­ic, spacey ele­ments. Heavy Sleep­er is anoth­er stand­out track: a dreamy jour­ney with less of the the­atrics, a space half way through the album to step back, breathe and bring some lush instru­men­ta­tion. And Bub­ble takes us back to that mys­ti­cal vibe, yet again the band tem­per the sweet­ness with bass.

Links Hel­lo Mary | Face­book | Frenchkiss Records

Pho­tos: on iPhone from EoTR