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IVH (Pride): Lande Hekt / Going to Hell [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-22
Continuing with the Pride theme, tonight’s selections from Bristol (by way of Exeter) UK’s Lande Hekt. Solo tunes and a couple from her band Muncie Girls.
Sometimes the hardest person to be honest with is yourself. On “Whiskey,” Bristol-based singer-songwriter Lande Hekt runs through a list of questions that imply something in her life is amiss, each item in the interrogation shouldering more weight than the last. The true meaning of this DIY-punk-goes-alt-pop anthem is scrawled in invisible ink: To Hekt, the song represents the moment she realized she couldn’t keep pretending that she wasn’t gay. As the opener of her solo debut, Going to Hell, “Whiskey” epitomizes the highs and lows of Hekt’s first independent foray. After a decade as the singer and bassist of the punk-rock band Muncie Girls, she’s got hooks to spare. But as she reevaluates her life as a queer woman in solitude, Hekt occasionally stumbles into lyrical pitfalls that oversimplify the very messages these songs aim to prop up. Written during Hekt’s coming-out period, Going to Hell captures what it’s like when queer pride in the local punk scene takes on newly personal meaning. Jolts of disbelief and self-doubt weave through “December” and “Hannover” as Hekt wrestles with her heart. “What if it’s you that makes me happy for once? What if I tell you that and I get no response?” she sings, her panic bolstered by a slosh of lo-fi pop-rock akin to P.S. Eliot. Realizing you’ve outgrown hetero culture in adulthood can feel surreal, like watching a model in a glossy ad being reverse-Photoshopped at hyperspeed. If Hekt experienced a similar revelation, it’s not directly discussed in these songs. Instead, she recalls the cold shoulders thrown her way—“Your friends from home start acting strange/When you try to be yourself for a change,” goes the title track—a very real, albeit fractional, part of a larger whole. — Pitchfork
Gay Space Cadets
Going to Hell very much feels like a "solo album" in that the music is more scaled-back and folky than Muncie Girls and also that the lyricism is much more personal. Not that Lande didn't write personal songs in Muncie Girls -- one of their best songs, "Jeremy," is a "big fuck you" to her father who she hadn't spoken to in ten years -- but Going to Hell is even more introspective, and it remains that way for its entirety. The whole record functions as a concept album about Lande finally coming out as a queer woman after hiding that side of her for years, and as she recently told Upset, "["Jeremy"] was slightly terrifying, but this was more exciting than scary." "Even if I’d tried to make a record that wasn’t about coming to terms with being gay, it would have been about that," she said in the same interview. "Even if it’s not the main topic, a lot of the songs are about either coming out or looking back to times when I was trying to pretend to be straight." She adds that, as a teenager, her own internalized homophobia caused her to try to bury the fact that she was gay, but after spending a decade in the punk scene and seeing the constant support for queer people and queer artists, she realized "that this is the coolest thing ever, that I do want to accept this part of myself." The album channels a whirlwind of emotions, but ultimately it's a celebratory record, and the songs sound as hopeful and triumphant as the messages within them. They're also some of the best songs Lande has ever written. Her voice soars on this album, her melodies get stuck in your head, and the overall feel is warm and welcoming, making repeated listens feel both requisite and rewarding. It's not a punk record like Muncie Girls, but it has the rawness, honesty, and DIY values that come with spending a decade in the punk scene. You can tell that she really means every last word on this album, and that's what makes it so powerful. — Brooklyn Vegan
Whiskey
“Homophobia and heteronormative culture can make you feel isolated and scared of being yourself. I internalised a lot of that culture for a long time and it wasn’t until I found myself surrounded by queer and trans people and friends, that I realised I could live happily in a way that felt right. I know I’m not alone in feeling like this and it was other people sharing their experiences with me that helped me out, so I named the album after this song to try and reach people who might want to be reached. It’s also not a dig on all Catholics; it’s just an expression of scepticism from a gay person regarding conservatism.” — Lande Hekt ‘Going to Hell’ press release
Many of the tracks on Going to Hell show Hekt’s thought processes, worries and paranoias, but this album has an overall buoyancy that holds the good afloat above the roiling sea of hopes and fears. Hekt cites acts like The Replacements, The Raincoats, Sharon Van Etten, The Slits and Patti Smith as influences, and I hear that utilization of their rawness with the power of indie-pop, like an angry-happy stew of Billy Bragg and Jenny Lewis. Many of Hekt’s songs have a glorious light and dark quality like the moment before a race begins; it could be Formula One, greyhounds or the 100-meter sprint, but there is the delicious anticipation of the explosive moment when engines roar, dogs snarl and the starter pistols reverberates. — Joyzine
December
Going to Hell isn’t our first taste of Hekt’s talent, but it is the first time we’re seeing her in the solo setting. Notably, she played every part on the record save for the percussion. Often, the bandleader’s first solo record suffers from sounding too much like their band, just with different marketing behind it. Hekt, on the other hand, is certainly showing us something new. Throughout her work with Muncie Girls, her voice is often at the forefront. It’s placed high in the mix, her words are clear. That’s why it’s interesting that on her debut as a solo artist, she seems to be more obscured. Her vocals on songs like “80 Days of Rain'' are heavily washed out and distorted, like they’ve been placed behind frosted glass. While Hekt certainly hasn’t abandoned her punk roots, they’re expressed differently here. She’s still making punk music, but now it’s closer to folk-punk. It’s hard to imagine any of her past projects ending with a Billy Bragg-esque political song done simply on acoustic guitar, or for the back half generally to tilt towards balladry. [...] Going to Hell is the coming-out party that Lande Hekt deserves. Her first record since coming out as gay, she spends its runtime unpacking what years in a heteronormative industry does to a queer artist in respect to repression and self-image. Hekt has said in interviews for a long time she feared coming out because she worried she’d be pigeonholed. This is a common worry among queer artists, and it’s heartening to see someone like Hekt break past it. — Post-Trash
80 Days of Rain
While the album finds Hekt in some dark moments, it never quite feels desolate and numb the way, for instance, Phoebe Bridgers can. With “Undone,” Hekt’s focus isn’t on the present but the future as she resolves to quit smoking, stop living in distraction and put herself back together. Similarly, she finds companionship to overcome her anxieties on “Impending Dooming.” Though less boisterous than her work in Muncie Girls, Hekt’s melodies are top-notch as always, and her distinctive voice consistently carries a quiet sense of hope and resolute drive. Meanwhile, Hekt herself remains refreshingly unadorned and plainspoken. Her lyrics have a way of cutting to the core, rarely wrapped in overwrought language. Hekt’s debut may lean away from punk instrumentally, but the blunt core to Hekt’s writing remains. At its best, this speaks to the record’s themes with universality. The record’s most instantly evocative moment comes late on the record’s title track as Hekt sings, “I’ve lived my life for other people/Not in a good way/Not in a good way/In a really shit fucking way.” — Under the Radar
Gas Mark 4
It’s probably possible to dislike a record that opens with the lyric, “I’m so angry, I’m going to get a tattoo, that says ‘fuck Jeremy Clarkson, and fuck you too” but not on this watch it isn’t. In case it passed you by, Exeter trio Muncie Girl’s 2016 debut ‘From Caplan To Belsize’ was one of the most special indie rock records to emerge in an age. It was a record that recalled all manner of bands from an era when indie rock was called college rock (Veruca Salt, Throwing Muses, Buffalo Tom to name but three) and succeeded in every song delivering the feeling of a close friend leaning into your ear and telling you a secret. Muncie Girls were part of a gang of British bands who were of a similar ilk (Doe, Personal Best, Happy Accidents to name another three) who shared similar musical aesthetics and political concerns. Oh man, it’s a shame if that passed you by. It was ace. For a while it felt like Seattle in the ’90s. At the fulcrum of its brilliance was singer/bassist Lande Hekt, whose lyrical observations bounced from feminism, to Sylvia Plath, to the sort of political awaking that occurs when you realise you’ve spent a decade at school and you haven’t really learned anything of very much importance at all. — NME
Muncie Girls :: Jeremy
WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Donald Glover, Machine Gun Kelly (R 3/29/22)
Stephen Colbert: Michael Shannon, Tig Notaro (R 11/16/22)
LAST WEEK'S POLL: EARLY 80s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE CAST MEMBER
James Belushi 18%
Robin Duke 0%
Mary Gross 0%
Tim Kazurinsky 9%
Julia Louis-Dreyfus 9%
Eddie Murphy 55%
Joe Piscopo 9%
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