Hella

Acoustics

(5RC)

Record Review by Kate Guillemette

Few instruments have as much cultural baggage to bear as the poor acoustic guitar, which, through no ambition of its own, has been summed up in the popular imagination as belonging solely to mainstream country icons, sad women, amorous fraternity members trying to get some play, and, of course, by people selling out on MTV Unplugged.

Sacramento’s Hella is having some fun with that image on their hold-us-over-till-the-next-full-length EP Acoustics, which was recorded live and, as you may have guessed, on acoustic instruments.  The Acoustics EP emphatically underlines that one does not need feedback, reverb, other effects—or even that fancy-pants electricity stuff, really—to have a high-octane total freak out. 

Half the songs are from 2002’s Hold Your Horse Is, and the other half are from 2004’s The Devil Isn’t Red.  On all of them, acoustic guitar and drums are frantically beaten to—and often past—the point of becoming one solid sludgy quadruple-speed smudge—not unlike the irrecoverably melting bunny of the cover art.  The approach makes Acoustics a rather exhausting exercise in listening to bursts of nearly monotone staccato, relieved periodically by more delicately intricate passages.  I found the combination most successful on “Welcome To The Jungle Baby, You’re Gunna Live!”

The record is definitely not meant to be a crowd-pleaser and is even drawing mixed reviews from the Hella faithful, but I vote that running complex, aggressive, freaky, jazz-rock material that is already not “commercially viable” through the apparatus of the unplugged genre, which was created to make loud rock more commercially viable, to come out with a result that is even less commercially viable (and not even new, though new to 5RC) is a really enjoyable schtick.  As a bonus, the songs were good to start with, and Zach “I don’t need no stinking amplification” Hill and guitar abuser Spencer Seim are masters of their very selective trade, even doing it organic-style.

However, if neither the idea of Hella turning the unplugged genre on its ear nor the prospect of listening to half an hour of frantic off-kilter acoustic pounding makes you smile, you definitely should not pick this one up.