Skullcrusher - And Your Song is Like a Circle Review

Helen Ballentine’s And Your Song is Like a Circle drifts between warmth and unease, turning quiet isolation into something hauntingly beautiful and deeply human.

Saturated with ethereal melancholy and personal inquisition, Helen Ballentine asks the question “what do I live for? Who do I live for?” wrapping it in a blanket of dreamlike piano chords and haunting backing vocals. In 2022, she left Los Angeles after having lived there for a decade to return to upstate New York where she grew up, living in self imposed isolation in the years that followed and surrounding herself with all manner of film, literature and art in an effort to come to terms with the dissociative effects of uprooting her life. Particularly enamoured with the works of David Lynch and Hayao Miyazaki, she conceived of her sophomore album And Your Song is Like a Circle while still in LA, but did not allow it to take shape until well after she had returned home. 

The album is quite a lot heavier than you might at first assume, while not especially loud or rock inspired at any point, Ballentine layers a number of subtler sounds over one another throughout in order to create a feeling of quiet sonic oppression. It almost feels like being punched through a pillow, it is quiet, delicate and restrained while still delivering a devastating blow. This is perhaps most evident throughout the album’s fourth song ‘Maelstrom’ which possesses a number of moving parts that are individually almost whisperlike, but come to completely overpower you. “I want to sound pretty” she proclaims as the song opens, her vocals are then lightly distorted as the drum machines begin to swell behind them and the guitar begins softly in the background. She then asks “do you feel like yourself around me?” to no one in particular. A sense of regret lingers over the entire song, combined with the instrumentals and backing vocals it feels almost suffocating.

Ballantine does a phenomenal job of using her music to create an atmosphere. You can almost feel yourself in her apartment, fighting off hoards of moths while swaddled in a blanket of pure summer humidity. At no point during the album does anything feel cold, or sharp, or overtly unpleasant, but it fills you with a sense of dread that you can’t quite describe. She combines a relatively slow, but undeniably present drum machine, and layers of haunting vocals to elicit a sense of semi-unconscious trepidation. You can absolutely tell that David Lynch was a major inspiration in Ballentine’s creative process. She even goes as far as to reference Twin Peaks in the album’s sixth song ‘Periphery’: “all my dreams await to go on, behind the crimson curtain". She would not be out of place by any means to cite David Lynch as a source of inspiration, she does a masterful job of creating this sense of dreamlike unease that permeates throughout every facet of the album. Unfortunately however, one cannot curate such a strong atmosphere without any adverse repercussions.

While the album is exceptionally cohesive, it has become so at the cost of sounding a little monotonous. There is a frustrating lack of tonal nuance throughout that makes it a little difficult to love this album instead of just liking it. By the start of the seventh song: ‘Red Car,’ it is becoming hard not to be a little frustrated. By the eighth song however, I am relieved of this concern, if but for a second. ‘Exhale,’ the lead single, is according to Ballentine “about noticing the moment when a song is first conceived”, she once again creates a magnificent ambiance, shifting out of the sodden melancholy and moving into something more hopeful, almost proud. Her use of faster drums and more joyous guitar chords invite you to feel as she does when she conceives of a new song. It is quite difficult to specifically evoke the sensation of the clouds parting and the sun reappearing after a storm, but she manages to do it remarkably well, once again managing to continue to create the sensation of upstate New York’s stifling summer air before relieving you of it for the length of the song, only to drop you back into it tenfold with the next song ‘vessel’, a darker, muggy feeling number that begins the album’s plod towards its end. It is a short yet deliberate song that washes over you with its eerie guitar and soul-rending vocal melodies that completely snaps you back into a soft, suffocatingly warm embrace.

And Your Song is Like a Circle is an album helped by multiple listens, each time its subtleties become more apparent and each song distinguishes itself from the rest just a little bit more. Ballentine teaches a masterclass in atmospheric creation as she forces you to sit with her, drowning in her isolation and retrospective spiralling from her stuffy New England apartment. The album feels like a series of moments, a questioning of identity and self-worth, and of the way it feels to leave everything behind while feeling like you might not quite be ready for it, but persevering anyway.