Album Review: Helen’s The Original Faces Is Still a Little Haunted

The curious “Helen,” credited with backing vocals on The Original Faces, sounds a lot like Harris. Was she credited as a joke, as a real person, or perhaps as a reference to Mount St. Helens? The album doesn’t answer this question, instead leaning into slipperiness, its tracks running short as though running away. That subtle frustration is central to its ethos: At once dour shoegaze, dreamy jangle pop, and reverb-soaked surf rock, it resists categorization, sneaking in some ambient experimentation, too.

Spanning just over thirty minutes, The Original Faces’ tracks are brief and elusive—the longest, “Violet,” barely grazes the four-minute mark. Vocals are distorted and submerged in haze. Helen evokes a sunburned atmosphere, a summer road trip recalled in fragments. A decade after its release, the album still hasn’t found its destination, because it was never meant to. 

The Original Faces opens with “Ryder,” whose raspy tape sample builds a warm melancholy, frayed and bright. Harris’ vocals drift in mid-track, languid and mournful, like a singer in a ‘60s girl group buried beneath a tide of fuzzy reverb and melodic bass. Thus begins Helen’s road trip, a drive along an anonymous coastline drenched in fog.

“Motorcycle” continues the ride, settling into a misty reverie as Harris’ vocals wash across the track like water shimmering on hot asphalt. Bindeman’s drums keep things tethered to earth, but just barely—eeriness lingers, and it’s easy to imagine Harris as a teenage ghost reflecting back on her life. “Covered in Shade” is an uptempo, outdoorsy snapshot; Harris’ vocals ache with adolescence, then fade in a hiss and hush. 

Helen’s sound is dense and muffled, something you’d overhear through the walls of your cool neighbor’s apartment. But on these early tracks, you catch yourself drifting back to the raw, childlike feel of 2010s indie garage—Cherry Glazerr’s “Haxel Princess,” La Luz’s “Black Hole, Weirdo Shrine”—which is to admit being caught in memories of being younger, more open to the new. 

“Felt This Way” forces a growing up again. It’s crunchier, darker, caught in a thunderstorm of reverb. A wet, heavy bassline seeps into surf rock territory, though Harris’ voice remains angelic, even as it’s pulled underwater. The second half of the album shifts between dream-surf—“Right Outside” lets in a little sunlight with clearer vocals and a dusty tambourine jangle—and heavier meditations. Harris’ ache is buried beneath texture on “Dying All the Time,” a weighty, drum-heavy roar.  

As the album winds down, the clouds briefly thin. A keyboard plunks unexpectedly across “City Breathing,” a brief interlude that feels like pulling off the highway to stretch your legs. But The Original Faces’ emotional peak, “Violet,” plunges back into fog with fuzzed-out guitars; Harris’ vocals are at their most heavenly, floating somewhere above Bindeman and Simmons’ instrumentation. A bass solo interrupts midway, then elbows space for more of Harris’ spectral mezzo-soprano to shine.

A 94-second instrumental track closes The Original Faces, spare and sorrowful; it feels like a rewind to the album’s beginning. It’s a fitting choice for a project that never truly resolves, only steers through haze. 

Helen’s sound reaches for many genres and moods, but it might be best described as shoegaze gazing at itself, an echo of an echo. The Original Faces lives between words, like a childhood memory or a slipping dream recounted to a friend. You’ll dig the layers if you’re into Galaxie 500, Slowdive, or shoegaze progenitors Black Tambourine. 

Ten years on, The Original Faces still holds water, or maybe a whole ocean. It’s the perfect album with which to say goodbye: To summer, to the songs you’ve forgotten, and to your former selves.