#Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach

[womencreativemusic]

Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach, U.K. https://stillhouseplants.bandcamp.com/

[dustedmagazine]

Still House Plants — Fast Edit (Blank Forms/Bison Records)

Photo by Peter Gajewski

Fast Edit by Still House Plants

The trio of David Kennedy, Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach and Finlay Clark met at Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and formed the band that would soon be named Still House Plants. Tied to other artistic collaborations, the group’s sound is hard to pin down, but they embrace post-rock repetition, free jazz fluidity and honest, shy lyrics. Their ultimate objective, though, seems to be to shatter their own intuitive pulses and inhibitions, reject practicality, and embrace self-imposed restrictions. Clark recently reveled in playing with fat guitar strings live as a deliberate attempt to have them break on stage, embracing a type of “self-sabotage” that forced him to “figure it out.” The sound that comes out of the backend of this process is uninhibited, a personal, beautiful, fluid, amoebic but controlled mess.

Still House Plants’ self-titled cassette released on Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council, a quaint Glaswegian experimental label, was a short, expressive outing that laid out the general sound palette displayed on following releases, Assemblages and their first full-length, Long Play. The trio, simply put, play electric guitar, drums and sing. They avoid guitar pedals and other effects, outside of maybe slight distortion, a type of self-imposed restriction that leads to rich, monochromatic explorations of mostly meter and tension. In rehearsals they pull and poke at their songs, over and over, kneading them until they have the right elasticity and texture. They suspend notes and the rests between them, they hesitate sometimes and act impulsively at other times.

Fast Edit, their second full-length album as a group, is their most complete collection of tracks so far. A continuation of the interpersonal, band dynamics explored on earlier recordings, they sound the most connected here, playing off each other and coaxing one another on, sharpening their rubato-based approach. They embrace a few clever tracking techniques, something relatively new to their unvarnished live sound. The lazy snare rolls on “Able To” appear and reappear in different parts of your speakers, a subtle mixing technique that creates a type of drifting feeling. “Shy Song” is composed of two tracks, one recording of the song laid on top of another. The one beneath picks up the sounds of the room, while the one on top is plugged right into the mix board, and the two together create a ghostly echo that embellishes the gaunt composition, a tense and slow piece with the kinetic potential of hydrogen.

Although Still House Plants have introduced new techniques, more noticeably, they’ve distilled their songwriting methods, acutely drawing them out. Moments, like the breakdown towards the end of “Curb” or the guitar and drum entry following the vocal intro on “September,” are some of their most explosive and visceral moments. Although they embrace small post-production quips, Fast Edit is an album where they go deeper into their own well, committing and trusting those restrictive measures; they sound something like the Magic Band with healthy interpersonal relationships, talking about their feelings and desires freely. They have an unmatched patience and vision to see out abstract ideas into emotive rock band parts.

Ian Forsythe

[heykav]

Still House Plants: 'In experimental music there's a lot of whiteness, snobbery, pretension' | Music

Still House Plants: ‘In experimental music there’s a lot of whiteness, snobbery, pretension’ | Music

[ad_1]

A show by Still House Plants might start with drummer David Kennedy thoughtfully assembling his kit. Only once the kick is weighted down, the snares are positioned and his stool is comfy do vocalist Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach and guitarist Finlay Clark join him on stage. These gentle theatrics reflect the trio’s eclectic, sometimes erratic, always intentional approach to performance. Even…