Helms Alee announce new record, Keep This Be The Way, out on April 29th via Sargent House

Across the span of their first five records, the trio of Helms Alee zeroed in on different aspects of their sound – a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing Northwest thunder and sludge, angular Econo-rock and heady guitar pop, while retaining their no-frills, meat-and-potatoes approach in the studio. But with this, Helms Alee have expanded their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by recording the a new record by themselves, creating their most dynamic and technicolored work to date. When the pandemic hit, guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen, bassist/vocalist Dana James, and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis found refuge in their music and bunkered down in a makeshift studio in Verellen’s amplifier shop. Through the remainder of 2020 and into early 2021, the band wrote the new record as a distraction from the surrounding turbulence, recording songs with the assistance of Ron Harrell as they were writing them, composing the material with the added benefit of hearing them come together from the engineer’s chair.

Entitled Keep This Be The Way, this new record features the aforementioned self-produced approach, which is immediately evident on first single and record opener “See Sights Smell Smells”; reverse cymbal crashes, fragmented piano, layered drums, woozy drones, saxophone freak-outs and trippy vocal treatments transport the listener to an altered state of exhilarated anticipation. The song is accompanied by a video created by Allen Watke, whose video art consists primarily of analog equipment with an emphasis on VHS dubbing, glitching & manipulation – you can watch said video below this article. Keep This Be the Way still very much sounds like a Helms Alee record, but it’s their first album that diverts from the faithful recreation of their live sound and delves into a vibrant tapestry of surreal sounds and invented spaces.

Keep This Be The Way will be released on April 29th via Sargent House. Physical and digital pre-orders are now available here.