I have been into the indie genre of music for a while now, even going to watch local indie bands perform around the St. Cloud area, but none of these bands have stuck out as much to me as the two-man Liverpool-based band, Her’s.
Today I will review their first album, Songs of Her’s. It was released on May 12th, 2017, unfortunately, they tragically passed away, along with their tour manager not even two years later in a freak car accident in Arizona on March 27th, 2019.
“Dorthy” – 7/10
“Dorthy” is the opener for the album, while I think it is a great opener the song is overall kind of bland, with the same guitar, bass, and drum riff playing over and over again throughout the entire song. The song also doesn’t have any interesting vocals or riffs like the majority of other songs on the album.
“Cool with You” – 7.8/10
“Cool with You” is Her’s third most streamed song with just over 82 million streams, despite it clocking in at over six minutes. Much like most of their songs, it begins with a pretty-sounding guitar riff. For about the first half of the song the vocals and all the instruments behind it are all very clear, and about halfway through the song takes a different shift with everything sounding kind of dirty, sounding like almost an entirely new song, eventually shifting back to sounding like the first half again, with nearly a two-minute instrumental outro. I think this song overall is amazing just with it being six minutes long it does feel a little drug out and lengthy.
“Marcel” – 9.5/10
“Marcel” is Her’s second most streamed song with nearly 84 million streams, while there aren’t many lyrics the beautiful instrumental for the majority of the song definitely makes up for the lack of lyrics. Even with the few lyrics they sound wonderful and are definitely some of the best on the album.
“Cop Theme” – 8.2/10
“Cop Theme” is the album’s twenty-five-second interlude, which features the late Adun Laading on bass guitar with a basic drum beat behind it. For being just an interlude it is one of my favorites on the album.
“Speed Racer” – 10/10
“Speed Racer” unlike most of the rest of the album is a fast-paced song with one of my favorite bass lines of all time. This song is actually how I discovered Her’s and I instantly fell in love with the song, it is easily in my top 10 maybe even top 5 favorite songs of all time.
“Medieval” – 7.5/10
“Medieval” brings us back to the slow feel of the album after Speed Racer. The song feels more like music to just have in the background when playing games with friends. For me, that is not a bad thing it just keeps a song from being great. I also feel like the song just goes on for a long time with it being slow and over five minutes.
“What Once Was” – 9.5/10
“What Once Was” is by far Her’s most popular song with nearly 270 million streams. If you just take a listen to this song you can see why, it begins with a beautiful guitar riff that instantly makes you fall in love with the song. The whole song just feels slow and has such a calming feel to it, from the guitar riffs, the bass groove, the drums, but probably the most important; the vocals, done by the late Stephen Fitzpatrick. What I think holds this song back from being a 10/10 is that like Dorthy it is a little bit repetitive.
“You Don’t Know This Guy” – 8.5/10
“You Don’t Know This Guy” has been severely underrated by myself. It has a long beautiful instrumental opening. While much like Medieval it does go on a little longer with it being slow and again over five minutes, but something just different about this one. I think it’s just the pure beauty of the sounds of the instruments that many bands can’t capture like Her’s.
“I’ll Try” – 8/10
“I’ll Try” feels like a bittersweet ending to such a beautiful-sounding album. The song is upbeat and happy while sad and slow at the same time. I can see no other song being the closer to such a phenomenal album. While nothing other than being a good closer sticks out to me, I still love this song.
Overall average rating: 8.44
While my rating averages out to 8.44, I would give Songs of Her’s a 9, while that is very high praise to give an album it is well deserved. The entire album like I’ve said many times just sounds so beautiful. It is truly a shame that Stephen Fitzpatrick nor Adun Laading got to see how much this album and Invitation to Her’s would take off.
~Rest in paradise Stephen Fitzpatrick, Adun Laading, and Trevor Engelbrektson~
