5 out of 5

Label: Suicide Squeeze

Produced by: Zach Hill (Church Gone Wild), Spencer Seim (Chirpin’ Hard)

Hella earned their fanbase by setting tongue a’wagglin’ with their blitzkrieg music genre mash-up attacks; while it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the duo that make up the group – Zach Hill and Spencer Seim – are both individually talented, it’s still satisfying to listen to the proof of this on Church Gone Wild / Chirpin’ Hard, where the boys separate their skills and each deliver their own disc for this double-album under the Hella moniker.  And as is the case with their powers combined, the resulting music flirts through various influences – this time occasionally nibbing from the Hella sound as well – but in the end produces something original.  Adding to the quality of the package is that this originality is true when comparing the album’s halves as well: Church is vastly different from Chirpin’, and yet the discs complement each other’s listen perfectly.

As it’s perhaps easier to focus on Church’s kitchen-sink brilliance, we’ll flip flop the order and talk of Seim’s Chirpin’ first.  Winkingly bookending his album with tracks that bleep and bloop like his Nintendocore project The Advantage, Chirpin’ Hard’s genius is in its misleading simplicity – head bobbing beats; accessible guitar riffs.  But dig a little deeper and the lo-fi recording flourishes with embellishments and herky time-signatures, drum loops falling out of place and then back in, keys zipping around, and a dash of krautrock whenever the roboticized vocals pop up.  The clearest example of how calculated the catchiness is is on ‘Home on The Arrange,’ which steps through several sections, mixing styles together that shouldn’t gel but sound well-matched the way Seim pieces them together.  Otherwise, throughout, Spencer out-Oxes Oxes (which a lot of bands seem capable of doing) with slapdash, energetic instrumentals, somehow presented with a Pavement-esque slacker smile.

Which is the perfect followup to Zach Hill’s insane Church Gone Wild a 12-movement performance about who knows what that definitely slips in and out of Hella indulgence, but with a more structured sensibility than when Zach and Spencer compose together.  The ‘movements’ are discernible from each other, but there’s also generally a pause in each song where the mood shifts, Zach maintaining some base element that he’ll loop through ‘neath the layers and layers of delicious sound.  The lyrics feel stream of consciousness, but as the music heats up, random phrases will morph into something sensible and nigh-poignant… preventing the project from slipping into wank-town.  Though wank-town would still be a far trip from these compositions.

The Hella I’ve listened to up until this point haven’t fully sold me on the band.  But hearing these guys’ talents separately has absolutely earned my attentions.