When introducing Skullcrusher, I’ve heard multiple people use a prelude to the tune of: “You would expect heavy death metal rock and anger, but it’s actually a raw, acoustic folk project.” However, I’d like to challenge the notion of the unexpected. What is more skull-crushing than elongated sorrow? Than being left with only your thickening thoughts in isolation? I believe that Helen Bellentine of Skullcrusher titled her project in response to an urgent loneliness. A feeling that is not only mind-numbing, but skull-crushing.
On her second EP, Storm in Summer, Skullcrusher realizes this mantra of isolation and stagency through their acoustic drawn tracks. As the Robert Hayden quote goes, love has many “lonely and austere offices,” and Bellentine fills each of them with pining tenants.
Skullcrusher crafts a bucolic setting employing the hymns of birds and wind. She illustrates a landscape: you’re listening to her secrets buried in tall grass adjacent to a dilapidated farm. The scene is so tranquil you nearly forget that she’s whispering refrains of contorted sadness.
The opening track “Windshield” immediately situates you in Bellentine’s dreamscape. Using elemental sounds to open, the track is layered with her semi-distorted vocals. The effect is one I’d imagine if you were to take acid at a barn party somewhere in a Midwest pasture. There are only two lines that are played in a dizzying loop, “I forced my foot through / The windshield in front of you.” We step into the EP with breakage, Skullcrusher is not just pushing on the windshield, but pushing through it — an act with irrevocable damage.
If it weren’t for the title of the acclaimed single, “Song for Nick Drake,” the song may have been shrouded in complete vagueness. Bellentine hums about existing in isolation and follows it with, “I walked home alone / With your song in my head / Finally understanding something / In what you said.” If you’ve listened to Nick Drake, you’ve understood his solitude. One that boils under each song. As he refused to do live shows or interviews while he was alive, Bellentine can only find company in the words he left behind and their shared seclusion. But revealing what she finally understood from him would be a disservice to Drake who kept his meanings sacred.
Bellentine continues to vacillate between yearning for connection and fear of being perceived. The third track “Steps” is in conversation with “Song for Nick Drake” regarding her loneliness. Ballentine allows her songs to answer and even question one another. “Wanting someone to be there / Also wanting no one to ask me how I feel,” she reflects. Ballentine forges a dichotomy rooted in intimacy. Like an interlocked hand that can only squeeze tighter or completely peel itself away.
The final two songs “Storm in Summer,” and “Prefer” lyrically function as one stretched conclusion to the EP. Bellentine uses the storm as a metaphor for connection and contemplates hiding from it; However, the closing track contains the repetition of “I prefer the rain in summer.” An ending pierced with optimism. Musically, the structure of the finale parallels the opening, bringing Skullcrusher’s narrative in a cohesive loop and closing the circuit.
Within five songs, Helen Bellentine sculpts an introspective portrait that further cements her name in the indie-folk sphere.
Essential Tracks: “Song for Nick Drake” and “Steps”
Prerequisites: Boy Scouts’ Free Company, Pickleboy’s Taking Care and Katy Kirby’s Cool Dry Place