The Hecks - The Hecks

Chicago trio The Hecks have been skulking around Chicago's DIY scene for some time now honing their unique twin-guitar sound, weaving tense and beautiful sonic passages of dissonance and harmony into weird and infectious pop songs. The band's eponymous debut has been two years in the making and is the long-awaited follow-up to their acclaimed 2012 debut EP on Moniker Records.

“The Hecks” begins with what sounds like a guitar being plugged into an amplifier, and a lone guitar strum begins the first song, “Sugar”. It’s an unassuming, casual beginning to a captivating debut, an album full of bewitching twists and turns. The Hecks have moved beyond their humble beginnings as a duo and transformed themselves into a raging, cacophonous trio. No better evidence is found than in tunes like “The Thaw” or “Trust and Order” which both find different ways to remake/remodel pop songs through an art-rock lens. The descriptor “post punk” applies, but isn’t quite accurate. The Hecks manage to cram knowledge gleaned from years of absorbing sounds and tones both ugly and beautiful, hitting all the wrong notes in all the wrongs ways to deconstruct sound into their own vessel. Noise drones like “Landscape Photography” and “Tea” sit comfortably amidst the more ‘traditionally structured’ tunes as well as the apocalyptic mid-album belter “Favor” which sound like something akin to the heavens falling. The mood is perfectly represented by the cover photograph by Chicago architectural photographer Richard Nickel of a scaffolded building bathed in an otherworldly light, giving the image a surreal semblance, skewing the perspective & giving the impression of the image tumbing toward the viewer.

RIYL: This Heat, Preoccupations, PIL, Spray Paint, Wire, Human Eye, A-Frames, Sonic Youth