MUST LISTEN: Hex - 'Solace'

‘Solace’, is the first full length LP by the quintessential dream-pop group Hex.

This album marks their return after their split EP release with local shoegaze band, Sway, over a year and a half ago. Though in good time, what better way to cope with quarantine spending your afternoons staring at the ceiling, losing your perception of time, waiting for that text to ring, than to hear Solace on repeat at the comfort of your own home! Hex delivers one of the most definitive dream-pop records straight from South San Diego. Capping at a mere 30 minutes, Hex unpacks three interludes interwinding genres ranging between shoegaze, dream-pop, and slow core.

“Battling with the melancholic greeting of isolation & uncertainty, this record pulls you into an atmosphere one could only describe as deep and sensitive.”

Battling with the melancholic greeting of isolation & uncertainty, this record pulls you into an atmosphere one could only describe as deep and sensitive. Each track, expressive to a certain fragment of time, is a transition in sound, guiding through an emotional journey into what we experience in a moment of solitude and self reflection. Familiar to all quintessential shoegaze albums, Solace’s sound production is one that fully captivates the dangly savor of chorus guitar tones, and dreamy distorted vocals. Innovative to it’s concept, Hex pulls a record that cultivates the likes of The Cure, Sonic Youth, Beach Fossils, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, and mushes them together between three respective interludes that compliment after each other.

The album begins with “Dyad”, one of my favorite tracks on the record. This track opens the record with a pop jolt seemingly resembling the likes of Beach Fossils. With the song centered on the longing to see someone you care about despite the unease of social environments, appropriately assembles the themes of isolation and uncertainty.

Next up, we’re hit with DRAM, Hex’s earliest release from back in October 2018, making its feature the first track ever worked on between founding members, Erick and Mikki. What I found so moving about this track on my first listen, was that despite it being the first recording ever released, it still fit into this album as a starting puzzle piece that runs incredibly smoothly into the following interlude. Almost as a climactic dive into dream-pop, it compliments the first track of the record and ends our first transition.

By the third track, the first interlude sets in. We’re met with what sounds like a distorted farewell, almost as if a wave of murmurs and laughters play with the listener and stray from us into a seeming abyss of heavy bass and distortion.

“Almost as a climactic dive into dream-pop, it compliments the first track of the record and ends our first transition.”

Our first transition brings us to Lillith. The first of Hex’s slow core tracks. It’s heavy, muddiness tone grounds you down as if it’s telling you to sit and listen.

“Skin” dives deeper into slow core with a poignant push similar to Sonic Youth. Though distorted and loud, the track emits itself as sweet and melancholic.

The second interlude is my all time favorite part of the album! The way the track seems to reverse itself back and then expand like some sort defying window into another dimension, completely shocks you. Hex’s chorus through this interlude executes such a warm essence as if you’ve now entered a world where every Cocteau Twins lyric made sense. As funny as it sounds, this transition hits you like a brick wall and prepares you for Hex’s third transition into Solace.

And just like that, the second interlude blissfully shifts into Hex’s cover of “There’s Never Enough Time” by The Postal Service. Now returning with the familiar guitar jolts from the beginning of the record, Hex delivers, in my opinion, one of the best interpretations of “There’s Never Enough Time”. It’s essence is completely it’s own, complimentary to the third shift in the record.

“Still” starts off with what I’d describe as a mood mix, similar to those posted on YouTube. You know the ones about “listening to X band, but you’re in X setting” The track opens itself as a muffled door opening into a room full of energy and vibrance. Here you can distinguish some post-punk influences promising what would be the perfect time to start a one on one mosh pit with yourself in your bedroom. If you’d be in a local dream-pop / post-punk show, this would be THE TRACK to dance and sway away.

“Here you can distinguish some post-punk influences promising what would be the perfect time to start a one on one mosh pit with yourself in your bedroom.”

Seemingly as a cosmic time whisperer, the last interlude “sucks up” what’s left of “Still” as if it reverses back and grounds down the end of the record.

The closing track “Solace” then punches through. With its punchy snare hits, and bent up distorted leads, it calls as the most euphoric track on the record. Almost as a form of reassurance Hex wraps up their best record to date.

“Solace” is due to release April 24th, 2020.

Must Listen, MusicKyla RainApril 23, 2020reviewComment