Essential Aliens

In addition to work in both Duster and Built to Spill, Jason Albertini molded his long-running solo project Helvetia into various forms since it began around 2005. In 2020, ninth album This Devastating Map offered a slightly more warped reading of the angular guitar rock of his associated bands, recorded at home with a particularly unpolished and lo-fi approach to production. This Devastating Map felt like off-axis indie rock, but his tenth album, Essential Aliens, takes Albertinis homegrown sounds to far weirder places. If the song structures of earlier Helvetia songs took unexpected turns, those turns happened in songs made up of chiming guitars, steady drum patterns, and pleasantly nasal vocal melodies. Essential Aliens opens with a free-floating cloud of sputtering drums and fuzzy tones played by layers of hard-to-place instruments. This sets the tone for the indirect path of the next 13 pieces that make up the album. Theres mumbly acoustic guitar pop like Crooks Go in the Ground and Better Get Gifted, noisy, distorted midtempo rockers like New Mess, and wobbly punk tunes like Claw and Why Am I Missing. Albertini explores the contrast between soft and harsh sounds throughout, with buzzing synthesizer lines or fuzz guitar leads rising out of nowhere to suddenly cut through relatively subdued background instrumentals. Most of the songs are brief; only one track is longer than four minutes, and the rest are under three. The snippet-like song lengths, abrupt changes, and kaleidoscope of strangely matched sounds give Essential Aliens a feel somewhere between early Beck, classic mid-90s Guided by Voices, and the kind of Pacific Northwestern indie rock sound that Helvetia has long been part of. The album never goes completely off the rails, but its significantly more adventurous and randomized than earlier output. Where Helvetia was once indie rock with psychedelic tendencies, those tendencies take over on Essential Aliens, creating a wild and beautiful patchwork that changes before the bliss from one moment completely fades into the delirium of the next. ~ Fred Thomas