Cult favorite Helen shows signs of volcanic activity at Union Pool

If the mission of Oregon-based, quasi-ambient queen Liz Harris is to convert the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest to sound, her solo band Grouper seems to describe its bodies of water, its mists and coastlines; and Helen, a special side project with bassist Scott Simmons and drummer Jed Bindeman, covers its volcanoes. Not only does Helen’s name and album art reference one, it is also emerging from a near ten-year dormancy, bringing its explosive sound to Union Pool three nights last week. After Helen released just one fantastic album in 2015 titled The Original Faces, its members turned to focus on their own musical projects, including a handful of critically acclaimed Grouper records. Fans like me assumed Helen was long extinct, a one-time thing. But last summer brought its members back together. They started with a west coast tour of The Original Faces, eventually bringing the show eastward. And that’s not all; at the merch table before the show Harris confirmed new music is in the works.

I never dreamed of Helen’s re-activity let alone a sequel to The Original Faces, which has been in heavy rotation for me for almost a decade. Internet lore says the band wrote its songs together in pursuit of thrash, ending up instead with something more “lo-fi bedroom pop,” twelve short tracks that are noisy and soft at the same time. A couple stand out, like the angsty “Felt This Way” and my favorite, “Violet,” which feels like a love song with its swooning choir and 3/4 time. But there’s something anonymous about the album as a whole that may explain why it sustains so many listens. The songs often traverse the same chord progressions and their melodies are not revolutionary. What makes them exciting is their fuzzy, overdriven, heavily reverbed layers. This is the Harris touch, the aural equivalent of warped film or grainy digital footage, which coincidentally, another audience member with a camcorder happened to be working on.

But it would be a crime to skip over the opener, Japanese duo Masaaki who primed us for an evening of many textures. Two tiny women, Aki Goto and Masami Tomihisa, wore sunglasses and poker faces as they alternated between lilting lullabies and what sounded like imitations of sleep paralysis. These multi-talented musicians commanded the stage with traditional percussion instruments, keyboards in both classical piano and 8-bit modes that evoked Legend of Zelda, and at times their own soft voices. They moved from docility to hostility, beginning their first song with a gentle hand and ending it by literally attacking their instruments with fists. A violin lay like Chekhov’s gun at Goto’s feet throughout the set. Finally she picked it up and scratched and scraped its strings with a metal tool for a truly skin-prickling, A24-worthy descent into chaos. The two were such untheatrical performers they had to confirm to the audience that was their last song as they packed up, and we were in turn charmed and endeared.

Helen was equally unaffected. For how impressive Liz Harris is—approaching the ranks of Brian Eno and William Basinski in the world of ambient music—she suffers no fanfare around her appearance and puts on no performing persona. We were getting the band in their default, PNW-ascetic, athleisure-and-baseball-caps mode. The only remotely frilly thing about them was Harris’ bubblegum pink Asics and Simmons’ matching t-shirt; the only extraneous thing the three new songs sprinkled in, not even an encore. They denied us any conversation onstage and communicated with each other only in nods. After Masaaki’s exit, they bustled from the merch area to the stage, reeled a few canned seconds of the first song on The Original Faces, then cut it off by jumping live into “Allison.”

Thenceforth they played most of the album out of order, only leaving out the title/outro track “The Original Faces.” Harris supported her live voice with pre-recorded vocal harmonies on tapes behind her. My one wish would be that Helen took the opportunity to layer vocal tracks on a looper in real time, but it was also exciting to think these might be the original recordings, voices captured in 2015 and kept like a genie in a bottle until the past year. Occasionally Harris cast an accusing glance at her arsenal of pedals and levers and dials, and between songs she queued tracks and made tweaks here and there. One of my favorite moments was when she pressed a button for the warm, staticky sound of rain between “Right Outside” and “Felt This Way.”

In charge of so many elements, Harris might be Helen’s star but the live show proved the other members were just as crucial. Although The Original Faces can sometimes pass as background noise, here the drums were far louder and more cathartic, and Bindeman took things up a notch with quickened tempos. And Simmons made clear the extent to which his heavy basslines anchor the songs away from shoegazey overindulgence. The best performance may have been “Pass Me By.” Simmons made a lead guitar out of the bass with a riff on the high strings. Bindeman had a few beats to himself to be flashy with the cymbals. Meanwhile Harris’ voice transported us to a cathedral—or an empty highway tunnel through the Cascades.
The three new songs seamlessly integrated into the set while keeping it fresh. Not surprising when Grouper is one of the most consistently good acts of the past two decades. “Life” tread slightly new territory with a dark bassline and simple drum pattern that evoked the cold gothicism of Lebanon Hanover. The other two songs were played in succession as a joint penultimate piece. Drums sat out for the stunning, somber “Black & Quiet.” All eyes were on Harris as she sang more clearly than ever with light bass accompaniment. The stage was drenched in a blue light, the waters of Grouper seemingly called forth. Then the song transitioned into “Dead Shark” which reintroduced Helen as fiery, crackling energy with all three members involved in its summoning. They finished with a last song from The Original Faces, “Dying All the Time” (written on their setlist as “Kraut” for some reason). But I’m left fantasizing of the next album and hoping the new songs they played find a home there. We could be so lucky to witness for the second time in Helen’s life its steamy, noisy, beautiful cataclysms.