Since the mid-2000s,
Helvetia
has served as a vehicle for
Jason Albertini
's cloudy and ever-shifting songwriting and homespun production.
Albertini
first worked in spaced-out slowcore band
Duster
and for a time was the bassist for indie rock legends
Built to Spill
, and
bears similarities to both. Ninth album
This Devastating Map
finds
in a particularly drifty phase of both writing and recording, with repetitive and melancholic tunes filtering through pleasantly wobbly lo-fi production. Marked by slightly distorted drum sounds, obtuse guitar progressions, and mumbly, home-recorded double vocals, album opener "Devastating Map" is weirder than
's somewhat self-serious glistening rock, but it sounds like a more adventurous demo for a
song that would be too out-there for some listeners.
's songwriting is like this for much of the record, taking the long road to find satisfying resolutions for his winding chord changes and peppering the mix with strange sounds the entire way. "Inverted" weaves chiming, sad-hearted guitar lines together with radio static and bursts of sloppy fuzz. It's somewhere between early
Modest Mouse
and the uneasy blur of
Eric's Trip
, with
's vocals sighing out abstract lyrics as waves of discordant organ rise and fall. "Echo Location" is more spare, with a lurching bass line and steady beat eventually giving way to shaky guitar lines and, finally, extremely loud vocals coating the last quarter of the tune. Intimate and insular,
taps into a distinctively Pacific Northwestern style of indie rock. The feeling of perpetual grey skies and vague dissatisfaction colors even upbeat tracks like "Reaktor" and the wah-wah-infused "Car Crash." The offhand performances and shambling recording recall the
K Records
aesthetic as much as they bring to mind early recordings from
Elliott Smith
. The unpredictable song structures, unexpected production twists, and hard-to-place emotional currents of
make it an album that merits repeat listening to catch all of its myriad subtleties. With this stage of
,
is clearly less interested in writing hits than exploring new approaches to sound and song construction. Instead of self-indulgent experimentation,
exerts masterful control in gelling purposefully erratic rock songs with untamed and risky production. The end results are as captivating as they are confounding. ~ Fred Thomas