When Bar Italia hit the Dean Blunt-starved Zillennial masses like a fucking atom bomb, skeptics accused the disaffected trio of coming off as too cool for their own good. We can argue over whether Tracey Denim has held up, but I’d counter that what made the band stand out in the first place wasn’t some effortless sense of style, but rather how awkward and discomforting they all seemed. Though their references may have been extremely well-worn, their pitchy singing, bizarre fashion choices, and sweet-but-slightly-off songwriting made them poster children for a growing generation of artists whose rock-star fantasies were shaped from late nights spent scrolling soon-to-be-shuttered blogs.
One such band is Los Angeles’ untitled (halo), who have been dogged by Bar Italia comparisons since they first hit the scene a couple years ago. Take one look at their Bandcamp page and it’s easy to see why: The visual sensibility mostly consists of blown-out photos edited within an inch of their life, and the vibey songs have titles like “el prado freestyle,” “limewire,” and “emo is good” that sound like a lot of things, and also nothing at all. The band is at its best at live shows, where, on a good night, their dejected mix of shoegaze, trip-hop, and other genres that have been beaten to death take on a revitalized energy. With Jay Are manning CDJs, a twin-guitar attack from Jack Dione and Nicholas Noneman, and Ariana Mamnoon leading on bass and vocals (with members taking turns jumping on the mic), untitled (halo) play loud enough that you can ignore the surface-level songwriting and get caught up in the buzz.
No score yet, be the first to add.
But on record it’s a different story, and while their smoggy EPs showed some promise, their long-awaited debut album for the 1975’s Dirty Hit label is a sadly empty experience. Though it gestures toward dissociative catharsis, it plays less like the soundtrack to a heartbroken molly hangover than the struggle to make an aesthetic grid post about it.
Until now, untitled (halo)’s music has come couched in an alluringly dingy haze, so the first thing that leaps out about their debut is the massive upgrade in fidelity. With an ocean of bands currently working in similar territory as this, it’s refreshing to hear these dream-poppy guitars and Y2K drum samples get some studio oomph. But from the jump the album seems to run on an endless loop. Tracks like “industry talk,” “thief,” and “you’re going to jail now” hardly qualify as songs so much as 10-second snippets stretched out to song length. It requires a certain kind of vocalist to evoke the emotional desolation hinted at here, and none of the members seem up to the task. Mamnoon’s sheepish Hope Sandoval impression is barely passable, while Dione interjects with yelped shout-rap verses yanked out of the Sum 41 universe, a jarring choice that he might’ve been able to sell if he weren’t bleating clichés like, “I overdosed on you/But you’re still my favorite drug.” Ironically, it’s the least featured singer, Are, whose voice is most compelling, popping up occasionally in a deep monotone hum that better suits the mysterious atmosphere.
But is this music actually mysterious? For all the cloud-rock-101 production and allusions to disorientation, most of the band’s songs don’t confound expectations but play right into them. At best, this results in pleasingly nostalgic head-nodders like the MPC shoegaze of “how to make your love (stay),” or moody dirges like “kissimme.” But what fleeting experiments the band attempts don’t gel into much. “aimee lou wood freestyle” kicks the album off by layering its fuzzy chords with Milwaukee lowend claps for some reason, a slight adjustment to the formula that nonetheless plays like pasted-on gimmick. The skipping sample that tees up “sex” at first seems like a potentially exciting wakeup from the album’s dreary sleepwalk, but ends up as the prelude for an anthem that never arrives. Between Mamnoon’s mumbled, repetitive verses, Dione shouts, “This city is over/Where is the party?/Nobody wants me till I’m dead in an Audi.”
Ultimately, untitled (halo) are most successful when they drop the enigmatic pretenses and embrace their truth as basically another indie rock band. On “easy rider,” they conjure, of all things, Silversun Pickups, trading vocals and swapping in enough new riffs and chord changes (remember those?) to carry the song through to a proper finish. But for the most part, they spend far too long feigning rawness and vulnerability while sounding entirely too put together. There’s little personal or emotional stakes on display in any of these songs, and the only “risks” taken either don’t land, or have already been well and truly trodden by countless other bands over the last few years. If anything, untitled (halo) represents the most market-friendly versions of these sounds yet.
Perhaps most frustrating is that at the last second, the album offers a reminder of how this band emerged from the Pretty But Wicked pack in the first place. The closing “On10” hints at a much deeper well of sounds waiting to be explored; glimmering piano reflecting off eerie pools of bass, each member’s vocals drifting in and out of the mix, their guitars and whispers all out of tune in just the right ways. It may still be more of a vibe than a song, but it’s a sharpened vibe that once again captures that sense of possibility over what untitled (halo) could be. For most of their debut, there’s a sinking feeling that this may be it.
