Going to Hell
Get Better
Feb 09, 2021 Web Exclusive
Lande Hekt has spent almost a decade fronting Exeter, England pop punk Muncie Girls and through that time one of her most consistent points of praise has been her unfiltered lyrics. Undoubtedly though, Hekt’s newly released solo debut is her most personal yet. More than just a solo record, Going to Hell is Lande Hekt’s coming out party, her first record as an openly gay woman. Though the party itself is low-key and intimate, Hekt’s latest work is thoroughly authentic and, through all her soul-searching and weary questioning, shines with simple, self-assured joy.
“Whiskey” opens the album with a series of questions, probing ever deeper into her insecurities before ending on her final questions—“Is it saying goodbye to who you were back then, is it the feeling of not having to pretend?” With that line, Hekt says she realized pretending not to be gay could not go on forever. The instrumentation mirrors the same progression, starting insular and building to celebratory melodic bliss. Though “Whiskey” quickly introduces the album’s themes, they don’t overwhelm the record. While “Whiskey” and the title track, a loping acoustic march, most directly address Hekt’s coming out, most of the record deals with it more obliquely. Instead, Hekt channels the swirl of emotions into a searching and achingly personal chronicle of her hard-fought journey.
Though Hekt is in a healthier and happier place now, Going to Hell often shows Hekt at her most lost. “80 Days of Rain” continues with the questions “Whiskey” introduced, this time directed outward as Hekt asks through muted vocals, “Are you gonna tell me to count to 10?/Am I never gonna see you again?/Is this just another string of bad luck?/Is this just another week where we don’t fuck?/This is where I think I’m going insane/I can’t do this again.” Elsewhere, “Winter Coat” and “Stranded In Berlin” find Hekt at her most isolated, delivering honeyed melodies with doleful lyrics as she sings, “I think I can predict this/You’ve become one of the people I will miss.”
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.”
However, that tendency does work against Hekt on the closer, “In The Darkness.” As the record’s most political moment, the refrain of “I’m more powerful than you’ll ever know/Because I’ve got democracy and I’ll never let it go” comes across as more platitude than potent. Hekt has dealt with politics in much less ham-fisted terms with Muncie Girls, and for such an otherwise unrelentingly personal work, it seems a strange choice to end the record. Nevertheless, Hekt pulls off the acoustic track’s populist, Billy Bragg-esque feel well. Ultimately, the record welcomes and restores better than it challenges.
If nothing else, Lande Hekt’s solo debut feels authentically her own. The lyrics, the songwriting, the distinct vocal lilt, even the instrumentals, which were almost all performed by Hekt, work together to speak to her journey. Even the occasional miss doesn’t blunt the effect of all the elements in concert. Altogether, Going to Hell presents the most intimate and complete vision of Lande Hekt yet. (www.landehekt.bandcamp.com)
Author rating: 7/10
Average reader rating: 4/10
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