- Electro-pop duo Hemm have been striking a stylish pose down in Melbourne for the last few years. These honed such affectations to a sophisticated point on their second EP, Make Me Stay A While So I Can Catch My Breath.
The elegant use of space was already very important to Juice Webster and Bobbie Downie, so much so that they worked it into the title of their first EP: Space Between Us. This refers to both emotional and musical distance, gaps sometimes bridgeable, somtimes not, qualities that are even more finely arranged on their new record.
The songwriting, spearheaded by the singer-songwriter talent of Juice, consistently references themes of emotional paralysis, a kind of limbo that descends upon her. It’s a response to a relationship that is falling apart, but without the kind of fireworks and recriminations that often characterises such unfolding dramas. Instead there’s a growing chill, freezing everything in place. I’m a little embarrassed, because I originally thought Make Me Stay A While was a breakup record … because why wouldn’t I think that Juice, writing as a woman, would be referencing romance? As it turns out, it’s a broader exploration of interpersonal relations, intimately linked to the revelations of the MeToo movement. I am a macho dinosaur slowly vanishing into the tar pit.
The creative dynamic between Juice and Bobbie Downie is a much more positive relationship. Juice’s compositional work is teased out in a shared studio process that is surprisingly avant-garde for music that is, at its heart, synthpop. Experimenting with transforming voices into instruments or creating wholly new acoustic instruments to achieve orchestrational effects are just some of the elements seamlessly folded in here. Even just the genre elements: pop meeting ambient, meeting dance: it’s often difficult to discern where one style ends and another begins. The final result is, well, exactly that: seamless. I often find myself returning to ‘perfectly poised’ as a description. The mood achieved here is, finally, less one of paralysis, than a kind of nirvana: a use of space that is impressive in its efficiency, its economy.
Tim Shiel, co-founder with Wally De Backer of the label Spirit Level to which Hemm have recently signed, heard a lot of promise in the pair’s first EP, enough to sign them in anticipation of the second. His instincts are clearly very sharp, because Hemm have delivered on that promise, categorically. Make Me Stay A While So I Can Catch My Breath is a significant step forward and stands in it’s own right as one of the most formidably stylish records of the year so far.
- Chris Cobcroft.