Helen
Linda's Head
Album · Rock · 2026 · kranky
There’s an enchanting sense of mystery to the music of Grouper—the ambient-folk project of the musician Liz Harris, whose songs often seem to evade literal interpretation even when she strips away the layers of distortion. Of her many side-projects, the most pleasantly surprising was Helen—the trio of Harris, bassist Scott Simmons (Eat Skull), and drummer Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry), who released a single album (2015’s The Original Faces) of sun-bleached, shoegaze-adjacent dream pop, then seemed to disappear.
Eleven years later, the trio has reemerged from the shadows with a follow-up, the enigmatically titled Linda’s Head. Here, fans of Harris’ reverb-drenched vocals can hear all that ghostly echo applied to songs much hookier and riffier than her usual fare. Still, the lyrics seem to escape your grasp like water through your hands—strange, slippery lyrics about dead sharks, half-remembered dreams, and the swirling blue sea.
Eleven years later, the trio has reemerged from the shadows with a follow-up, the enigmatically titled Linda’s Head. Here, fans of Harris’ reverb-drenched vocals can hear all that ghostly echo applied to songs much hookier and riffier than her usual fare. Still, the lyrics seem to escape your grasp like water through your hands—strange, slippery lyrics about dead sharks, half-remembered dreams, and the swirling blue sea.
Linda's Head
Helen
There’s an enchanting sense of mystery to the music of Grouper—the ambient-folk project of the musician Liz Harris, whose songs often seem to evade literal interpretation even when she strips away the layers of distortion. Of her many side-projects, the most pleasantly surprising was Helen—the trio of Harris, bassist Scott Simmons (Eat Skull), and drummer Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry), who released a single album (2015’s The Original Faces) of sun-bleached, shoegaze-adjacent dream pop, then seemed to disappear.
Eleven years later, the trio has reemerged from the shadows with a follow-up, the enigmatically titled Linda’s Head. Here, fans of Harris’ reverb-drenched vocals can hear all that ghostly echo applied to songs much hookier and riffier than her usual fare. Still, the lyrics seem to escape your grasp like water through your hands—strange, slippery lyrics about dead sharks, half-remembered dreams, and the swirling blue sea.
Eleven years later, the trio has reemerged from the shadows with a follow-up, the enigmatically titled Linda’s Head. Here, fans of Harris’ reverb-drenched vocals can hear all that ghostly echo applied to songs much hookier and riffier than her usual fare. Still, the lyrics seem to escape your grasp like water through your hands—strange, slippery lyrics about dead sharks, half-remembered dreams, and the swirling blue sea.
