Spike Hellis
Successor
Over-Pop
Spike Hellis’ self-titled 2022 debut LP was wild, unpredictable and unexpected. Part of what made the Los Angeles duo’s take on gnarly mutant body music feel so nervy and dangerous was its aggressive switch-ups, slamming from funky EBM into anxious synthscapes and moody sample cut-ups, all anchored by Lainey Chang and Cortland Gibson’s rancorous vocals. Paired with their furious live shows, which featured the duo crawling over a jungle gym of equipment while a neon sign invited you to dial 1-888-FKN-WEAK, it made Spike Hellis impossible to ignore.
Chang and Gibson’s new LP Successor takes all the spite, all the sweat, and all the smart programming and arrangement that made them so compelling, and boils it down to an even more potent and addictive formulation. It manages the trick of being both very minimal and absolutely enormous; at any given moment there could be little more than a bassline, a sample and a smattering percussion sounds going on, but each of those disparate elements is tuned and positioned for maximum impact. Debut single “By God” places a funky cowbell and crushed synth stabs on top of its burbling synth bass for one of the most addictive grooves of the year, and that’s before the shouted and sung vocals lob the song into brand new territory. Simultaneously, the Art-of-Noise-through-a-mirror-darkly “Entirely Mine” folds its repeated vocal samples into new shapes, ardent and punchy, but also steady and focused.
The sheer power of the record lies in its meticulous arrangement, how everything is placed in the mix, and the space left between each drum hit, shout, sample, or synth note. “Your Successor” doesn’t sound complicated, but there’s a wealth of variation in how Chang’s half-rapped vocals bounce off the off-kilter drum programming, the stereo spread of the slow moving background textures and the tiny ripples of digital artifacting that flow into the outro. It’s none of it accidental, whether at their most noisy (“Pareplaneta”, which explodes and then lets you sit uncomfortably in the echoes) or their most accessible (the surprisingly touching “Pillow Talk”, whose bright chirps and barks manage to sound melancholic) every element is purposeful, and adds to the strength of the whole.
And that’s all before we get into how ferocious and ornery Chang and Gibson are on the mic. And what’s more, that ire is cutting, and as refined and strategic as any other aspect of the album. There’s a genuine meanness to the sing-songy chorus of “Temptation” (“Feels like every time we turn around/these two petty fuckers run their mouths”) that suggests that whoever Hellis are addressing knows they’re being called out and would do well to duck them going forward. It’s a sort of calm antipathy that can be righteous (“Enemy Lines”), menacing (“Unwound (Get Right)”), or disdainful (“No Bite”), but is never obnoxious, no matter how spicy or bitter it might come across.
Successor is Spike Hellis distilled; all the raw energy, all the movement, all the combativeness of their debut is here, but made sleeker, and delivered in more calculated fashion. And bizarrely, it ends up being both bracingly intense, and a whole lot of fun to listen to. It shouldn’t be possible to sound this unbothered and cool and this savage at the same time, but here we are; Spike Hellis are working hard, but you’ll never see them sweat. Highly recommended.
