Review Summary: re-submit
Whether or not Hlllyh comes off as annoying, bandwagon-hopping swill on first listen is debatable. The Mae Shi definitely uses a formula that has become popular within the indie community: quirky gang vocals, electro-rock spasms, the whole deal. It’s kind of like someone took the band’s original minute-long noise freak outs and injected them with enough sugary Dan Deacon-inspired electronica and idiosyncratic Wolf Parade-aping vocals to feed an entire army of Pitchfork Media reviewers. Not as fun after you realize you’ve heard it half a dozen times already if you ask(ed) me. Or it might have been like that on first listen, anyway.
Because, after listening to the album numerous times, one will find something more tangible within its realms. What Hlllyh has managed to do here is to take a couple different facets of music described more often as amusing and fun rather than truly poignant and affecting and really connect it with the listener on an emotional level. And I don’t mean lyrically, because that’s where the album gets funny. The entirety of The Mae Shi’s second full length might work for the Noise Rock community as Neutral Milk Hotel’s The King of Carrot Flowers pt. 2 did in the lo-fi Indie Rock scene during the mid-90s:
The Mae Shi thump the bible like it hasn’t been done since Moses.
But still, whether or not you follow a faith or not, Hlllyh seems personal, accessible and important. It’s not all that awkward to just sing along. Run to Your Grave has one of the biggest, catchiest choruses on the album, and some of the most blatant religious references. The song is defined by electronic bleeps and synthesizer melodies, which only make the addition of real guitar and bass in the verse so interesting-sounding. “You've got to/Tear, burn, soil the flesh/God will do the rest/Scream, cry, pray, confess/God will do the rest” screams Mae Shi-vocalist Jonathan Gray over rolling snare drums and flailing noise-rock instrumentation. Young Marks, with its Auto-tuned vocals and highly-caffeinated electronic beat, might be the album’s most obvious attempt at irony, and though it rings a little false, it works within the album’s context: set between the epic gang-sung and death-foretelling Book of Numbers and the convulsive art-punk of Party Politics, I hesitate to call something as fun as Young Marks a real misstep.
The album’s bookends are two of its best, most different tracks. Lamb and The Lion begins with grating synthesizers and rolling drums, with huge four-part harmonies emerging in the chorus, while Divine Harvest boasts more organic instrumentation and the reassurance that “everything will turn out right … it’ll be over when you die.” It’s the kind of lyric that, though it’s delivered fairly solemnly, you can kind of tell there were a couple guys in the studio with huge smiles on their faces. Hlllyh is bothersome at times, but makes up for that fact with the amount of enjoyment that can be found in the band’s sound. Oh, what the heck, it’s just really good.
- Joe.
