Singer-songwriter Stevie Knipe has been making music for close to a decade, since they were a college student in upstate New York recording in a dorm room. But Knipe (who uses they/their pronouns) has really taken a leap forward in terms of both sonics and songcraft with the excellent Driver. While previous Adult Mom albums had a spare, bedroom-recording feel, Driver is more of a band album, with bright production and songs that carefully and vividly map out an early-twenties travelogue full of crisis, memory, hope, and the kind of intense moments that feel almost debilitatingly hard-hitting at that age — even if you’re just starting to become wise enough to know they’re ephemeral.
That mood gives Knipe’s writing and singing a kind of transitory gravity, as the album flows from the lovely country textures of “Passenger” to the bursting guitars and drum muscle of “Wisconsin,” to the sharp jangle and piano counterpoint of “Berlin,” to the stunning, fragile acoustic luster of “Regret It.” Knipe is phenomenal with first lines (“Dancing” begins, “I’m dancing to the song I crashed my car to”), and they can draw maximum sensory impact out of something as specific as knees brushing together in your parents’ basement or as universal and well-worn as a first kiss.
Refreshingly, Driver never feels overwhelmed by its drama or emotional peril. Knipe delivers potentially uncomfortable lines like “The only thing that I’ve this month is drink beer and masturbate and ignore phone calls from you” with an ease and casual honestly that helps takes the sting out of them. Even when things are not looking super-encouraging life-wise, there’s always a sense that even the darkest moments can’t break Knipe’s resolve — check the way the fragilely ascending rocker “Adam” goes from “I think about making lists of how I’m shit” to “At least I’m not afraid anymore/And I’m dancing in the light,” in the space of a single verse.
Knipe’s singing shifts from conversational to soaring, pensive to heroic, with a leap of anticipation in their voice that can bring to mind Michael Stipe or Buddy Holly. On “Breathing,” Knipe’s “only communication” is an “overdue hospital bill,” but that grim admission soon opens up into an absolutely lovely dream-pop swirl that evokes Cranberries or the Sundays at their most elevatingly lush. At 10 compact, differently beautiful songs, Driver is the work of an artist entering the springtime of their brilliance, as good as singer-songwriter indie-rock can get. It’s the kind of record you can’t but feel lucky to live in.
ALBUM REVIEWS
The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
