The Hecks - My Star - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Chicago trio The Hecks have been at it since 2012, starting out as the duo of guitarist Andy Mosiman & Zach Hebert. The band drafted guitarist Dave Vettraino into the fold, a recording engineer who was recording the band's s/t debut (Trouble In Mind, 2016) & ended up joining the band In 2017. The band's journey to the end result of InchMy StarInch - their second album - has taken them three years. After recording an initial version of the album in 2017, The Hecks started gigging with new fourth member & keyboardist Jeff Graupner, whose synthesized squiggles added some welcome heft & swagger to the band's tunes. After reworking & rearranging much of the new material to accommodate Graupner, the band scrapped the recordings & rebuilt them from the ground up, incorporating Graupner's skills at the keys. The results speak for themselves, as InchMy StarInch is a gigantic leap forward for the band, absorbing everything from InchManscapeInch-era Wire to Paisley Park nu-funk to abstract new wave & art rock plucked straight from the Cold Storage playbook. Much of InchMy StarInchs ten tracks are designed to bewilder; the production is intentionally disorienting, with the mix tipped toward the treble, alternating from sparse to confoundingly dense at times, but never at a disservice to the songs themselves. Opener InchZipperInchs intertwining guitar jabs & synth lines herk & jerk so rapidly it's liable to break your neck, while lead track InchSo 4 RealInchs neon-laced dayglo soul ratchets up the mutant funk throb so tightly that the lilting, melodic guitar break at the chorus is a welcome dose of ear-candy. InchHeat WaveInch dials it back, reveling in romantic washes of synth and flange & it's yearning refrain of InchIt's tearing me apart, ripping out my heart againInch; a captivating, slow burning ballad unlike anything the band has done before. Meanwhile album closer (and titl