Helms Alee

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More About

• Dana James
• Ben Verellen
• Angus Young
• Gregory Franklin

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To say that the new Helms Alee record, Weatherhead, is an exhausting listen is the ultimate compliment one could pay to it. Soldering together the divergent worlds of the dreamy and the screamy, Weatherheadis full of charged calls to battle floating beside moody, melodic lulls. Guitarist (and local amp maker) Ben Verellen fills the record with sparkling shoegazer moments that transition into monumental walls of speaker-destroying fuzz, screaming atop bassist Dana James' warm, woozy coo and drummer Hozoji Matheson-Margullis' aerobic drumming. Helms Alee's vision is expansive in scope but focused in execution, showing a band with no fear of trying new things; spastic sludge riffery sits comfortably beside spaghetti western instrumentals and Angus Young-style pluckery. Borrowing equally from the spaced out melancholy landscapes previously explored by Hum and Failure and the stampeding brutality of Mastodon, Helms Alee know exactly where they're going, but they're in no rush to get there. With Akimbo, Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth, Norska. GREGORY FRANKLIN
Wed., June 29, 8 p.m., 2011