Hallelujah The Hills Collective Psychosis Begone by: Tom Bradbury Mon:05-Nov-07 Label: Misra Year: 2007 WB rating 72 out of 100

As I was listening to Hallelujah the Hills debut album, Collective Psychosis Begone, I couldn’t help but draw connections between it and the novel I was also reading at the time, Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums – both involve irredeemably urbane hipsters and their fascination with the back woods. Aside from the fact that the band’s name and the content of Kerouac’s book both involve an ecstatic embracing of hill country, both Kerouac and Hallelujah the Hills are from Massachusetts, and the similarities do not end there. Kerouac was never able to resolve the conflict between his desire for pure living and rural experiences with his inner city drinking binges and desire for action and excitement. Likewise, Hallelujah the Hills can’t seem to find a middle ground between their alt-country songs and their far more knowing indie tracks. The inability to navigate between urbaneness and more back wood organic/authentic elements, you might say was the defining contradiction and quagmire of bohemia – the attraction to and the desire to be something that you could never be.

Thus, listening to Collective Psychosis Begone is an exercise in frustration, the songs ranging from compelling to tedious. It was the search and quest for authenticity that provided bohemia with its greatest fuel, rather than resting on its laurels and credentials, which is what Hallelujah the Hills are in danger of doing when they succumb to the hipster sound. They are at their best when then seem to still be in pursuit of something, as is more the case on their alt-country tinged numbers. ‘Sleeper Agent (Just Waking Up)’ contains an emotional resonance unmatched by the standard indie Neutral Milk Hotel fare of tracks like ‘It’s All Been Downhill Since The Talkies Started To Sing’ – here there is the all important sense of momentum, and also of magnetism, a “band to watch” quality that all indie bands seek but most fail to ascertain. Part of this is due to its impeccable arrangement – a very Arcade Fire-esque use of dynamics and lush cello provide an earthy, literary quality that imbues the song with meaning beyond what its lyrics typically would convey.
 
‘The House is all Lit Up’ also manages to tap into the well of spiritual flux that is the most exciting element of the modern indie world. It is enshrouded in the sounds of the back country; trickling water and chirping birds that soften you up into a state of sponge-like receptivity to the warm chaos of the chorus. Golden guitars dripping with honey embrace you so that you don’t care what Ryan Walsh means when he sings, “I am the filibuster it’s true/I’m gonna keep on speaking for you”. Thus, it doesn’t seem natural or necessary when Hallelujah the Hills return to what is obviously the reassuring familiarity of indie dullness. On tracks like ‘Slow Motion Records Broken at Break Neck Speeds’, guitars casually bludgeon, not ferociously or powerfully, but more with a drunken stupor. There is no power or really anything remarkable in songs like this. ‘Hallelujah the Hills’ is one of the less grating of the album’s non-folky tracks, as is ‘Effie’s on the Other Side’ , but both still fail to match the impressiveness of either ‘Sleeper Agent (Just Waking Up)’ or ‘The House Is All Lit Up’.

It would be unfair to say that Collective Psychosis Begone is undone by its split personality – there is simply too much to like in the exuberant authenticity of its more organic tracks – but it is most definitely harmed irreparably by it. Hallelujah the Hills will deliver an undoubtedly astounding sophomore album if they focus on the quest for a more healthy mode of being, instead of the more pretentious stalwart side of the indie world -or as in Kerouac’s case, return to the hills rather than the bottle.