ALBUM REVIEWS
“I’m not saying I’m not a careerist,” Bill Ryder-Jones told NME in 2019. “Where I am now is good; a little more success would be great but any more than that would be too much.”
At that time, the Wirral singer-songwriter (and co-founder of his former band the Coral) was talking up ‘Yawny Yawn’, a skeletal, piano-led reworking of ‘Yawn’, the grunge-inspired collection he’d released the previous year. For Ryder-Jones, ‘talking up’ meant speaking with stunning honesty that mirrored the nakedness of the songs themselves. It’s an approach that’s endeared him to an army of loyal fans, while perhaps also contributing to the fact that his cult fame has never quite become widespread renown.
Maybe that’s about to change. Ambitious, cinematic and hugely affecting, folky follow-up ‘Iechyd Da’ is in many ways the album Ryder-Jones has threatened to make since 2013 breakthrough ‘A Bad Wind Blows in my Heart’. His solo work has almost always been deeply personal, which is certainly true of this new self-produced record: ‘iechyd da’ is a Welsh toast to ‘good health’ and the album is partly named for his familial roots in the country. Its songs echo with references to his past tunes, its acoustic aesthetic is set to ‘wistful’ and the lyrics find him baring all with apparent fearlessness.
There’s some irony in that last point, given that tracks such as ‘Thankfully for Anthony’ and ‘It’s Today Again’ relay his frightening mental health struggles. The former, though – a sequel to his 2013 track ‘Anthony & Owen’ – celebrates its titular character’s kindness and the latter features a ragged children’s choir whose evident lust for life is infectious. Standout ‘If Tomorrow Starts Without Me’, meanwhile, sums up the battered optimism at the heart of ‘Iechyd Da’. Underpinned by muted strings and a warm, rolling organ refrain, it’s at once melancholic and uplifting; a windswept relation of Belle and Sebastian’s ‘The Boy with the Arab Strap’. “If the monsters call you names, then I’m with you,” Ryder-Jones croaks. “I’ve had monsters play games with me too.”
The kids crop up throughout ‘Iechyd Da’, a joyous counterpoint to the album’s heavy themes, while the singer uses samples (see eerie opener ‘I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)’, which borrows Brazilian singer Gal Costa’s ‘Baby’) as a further breath of fresh air. He might not be the steeliest careerist, but the lad from the Wirral has clearly thrown everything at this masterful record.
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.
