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Nico Hedley Wants To Sing It So Loud That It Makes It Alright

by Nico Hedley

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Maria 04:45
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Rosy 05:02
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Driving Day 03:41
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about

The second album from New York singer/songwriter Nico Hedley—Nico Hedley Wants to Sing It So Loud That It Makes It Alright—consists largely of explosive and declarative rock songs about getting through life by any means necessary. The record is crammed full of punchy power-choruses that sound like desperate reminders to self, and shoot-from-the-hip guitar leads propel the songs’ action forward past moments of anxiety and anhedonia. The opening track “Black Box Recorder” is a startling introduction to the bold sound of the record. It opens with stately guitar arpeggios underscoring a string of elliptical metaphors (“I cry for the sunken galleon/I mourn for the golden calf”). The second half of the track is more literal but no less cryptic, describing someone turning a light on in a room where someone else is sitting in darkness. As if mirroring that startling effect, the song is unceremoniously swallowed up by a wall of distorted guitars. The gesture announces a new Nico Hedley to fans only familiar with his existing, more restrained recordings.

After his country-influenced debut—2021’s Painterly—Hedley views …That It Makes It Alright as a return to his musical roots. He grew up amidst the DIY scene of New York City in the 00s and early 2010s, enamored with the chaotic noise-rock and off-kilter punk that flourished there. Hedley also cites the venerated bands that constitute his noisy-but-melodic rock canon, including college-rock heroes Yo La Tengo (at their most unhinged), Hüsker Dü, The Feelies, and early Blonde Redhead. Instead of refining his fingerpicking and country twang as he did on Painterly, Hedley worked on running his voice ragged by screaming hooks and layering guitar feedback. (Some of these songs feature eight guitar tracks, each run through multiple amplifiers cranked up all the way.) Fatigued with the well-manicured sound of folk-leaning indie rock in his hometown scene, he encouraged his central power trio—consisting of bassist Andrew Stocker and drummer Jeff Widner—to play with passion and a dangerous level of looseness. With this, he hoped to capture the chaotic sense of reaching for something grand and inaccessible that he strives for in his live performances.

The songs on …That It Makes It Alright, though, are more sophisticated than Hedley might have initially imagined. Poetic and figurative lines punctuate his power-pop-adjacent refrains. In “I Just Wanna Be Alright,” nods to Semiotics, a Kay Ryan poem, and the lyrics of David Berman, and the Stone Roses erupt into a simple and direct cosmic plea: “I just want to be alright.” This wording pops up throughout the album—an unintended pattern, Hedley claims—which frames happiness as a slippery, illusory concept. He distills it best in “Maria,” written as a conversation with his landlord: “Maria calls me over/to ask me if I’ve been doing alright/I say some of us don’t get to feel that way/But these days I’ve been thinking that’s just fine.’”

For all the directness of address and overdriven insouciance that distinguishes …That It Makes It Alright from Painterly, the songwriting retains the musical qualities that made the earlier record so engrossing: the idiosyncratic harmonic language and the searching, melismatic structure of the vocal melodies. Similar situations and conundrums crop up lyrically, too; in “Rosy,” he revisits the subject matter of Painterly’s “Lioness” against ear-catching, baroque chord changes. Here, his narrator examines his own relationship through observing the public presentation of another. Hedley also closes the record with a grungey revamp of the sprawling “Painterly,” inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem which Hedley murmurs against a rising tide of snarling, atonal guitar in the second half of the song.

A visceral and constantly engaging whirlwind, …That It Makes It Alright plays out like thirty minutes of watching Hedley fight windmills, both in word and musical gesture. He reaches for connection and dreams of a balmier day-to-day existence. He steps into and outside of himself, interspersing self-deprecation and shoulder shrugs with earnest introspection. When his frustration is not spelled out in words, it is expressed through blasts of righteous amp noise. Full of pop smarts, cutting wit, and a pervading sense of reckless abandon, …That It Makes It Alright is a strikingly self-assured statement: cathartic music about the heaviest and most universal human feelings, set to melodies that aim straight for our pop pleasure centers.

credits

released September 8, 2023

Nico Hedley - Written by, Produced by, Vocals, Guitar
Andrew Stocker - Bass
Jeff Widner - Drums, Guitar
Benedict Kupstas - Design, Layout, Synth, Electronics
Winston Cook-Wilson - Rhodes, Synth, Electronics
Drew Citron - Backing vocals, Percussion
Ian Wayne - Engineered by
Tom Teirney - Synth, Engineered by, Mixed by
Carl Saff - Mastered by

Recorded at Grammie Guaranteed in Queens NY by Nico Hedley and Ian Wayne, additional guitars recorded at Spaceman Sound in Brooklyn NY by Tom Teirney. Mixed at Spaceman Sound in Brooklyn NY by Tom Teirney Mastered at Saff Mastering in Chicago IL by Carl Saff.

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Nico Hedley New York, New York

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