Helen – Linda’s Head

Linda’s Head is the first new album in more than a decade from Helen, the Pacific Northwest trio of Liz Harris on guitar and vocals, Scott Simmons on bass and Jed Bindeman on drums. Released by Kranky, it follows 2015’s The Original Faces and returns to the group’s intimate, blurred-edge approach to dream pop while revealing a band that has carried its chemistry through years apart. The result is hazy and immediate at once: music that feels weathered, private and quietly luminous.

Helen’s sound sits somewhere between bedroom dream pop, shoegaze and the more fragile edges of underground guitar music. Rather than building walls of noise for their own sake, the trio work with half-light, silhouette and space. Guitars smear at the edges, rhythm parts remain simple but purposeful, and Harris’s vocals drift through the arrangements with an understated emotional pull. The songs suggest motion through storms, waves and imagined landscapes, balancing melancholy with a strong sense of release.

The title itself carries several possible meanings: a head in the clouds, a severance, or an invented landform pushing out into the sea. That ambiguity suits an album whose emotional shape is never completely fixed. Tracks such as “Faraway”, “Starline”, “Endless Sky” and the title song unfold with a sense of distance, while “Dead shark”, “Dead shark II” and “Canyon” deepen the record’s shadowy atmosphere. The influence of New Zealand underground pop can be felt in the melodic economy and weather-beaten warmth running through the collection.

At its centre, though, Linda’s Head is a record about the ease that can exist between long-time collaborators. Harris, Simmons and Bindeman sound connected without overworking the arrangements, letting small gestures carry the songs. For listeners drawn to Grouper, Kranky’s atmospheric catalogue, dream pop and understated shoegaze, this is a welcome and quietly powerful return from a trio whose music has always found beauty in blur, distance and friendship. It is a record made without grand gestures, rewarding close listening through texture, repetition and the subtle push and pull between the three musicians.