“Mercury appears to be in retrograde/ ’cause I’m feeling pretty low again,” Emileigh Ireland sings over a jaunty butterfly rhythm on “Listen Leo,” the astrologically obsessed opening track from Helen Scott’s Flattery & Bright Lights EP. At flighty moments like this, the local group, which consists of Ireland, Lindsey Jane Haddad, Dena Zilber and Hannah Weyandt, veers dangerously close to twee-kitsch overload.
Thankfully, though, the women of Helen Scott possess an intriguingly darker side, as evidenced foremost by the deceptively titled “B Is for Bugs.” Unlike “Listen Leo,” the track finds the band in a truly dreary, heavy-psych mood. Haddad’s lyrics here carry a general sense of malaise and decay (“I watch the mold grow sweet and sour/ noting the changes hour by hour”) and are damn near catatonic; meanwhile, the song’s sad, swirling backdrop circles lazily around her. It’s an unexpectedly beautiful tune, subtle and stark, helped along by a gnarled organ drone and a resigned sort of late-night punch-drunkness. “I should drink some water/ But I think I’ll stick with liquor,” Ireland coos defiantly on closer “Whiskey Song.” It’s no PSA, but hey: if that’s the secret dark force behind Helen Scott’s burgeoning brilliance, please, someone buy ’em another round.
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