Heatherhead, by Generationals

Heatherhead

by Generationals

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Kirk Gauthier I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something very comforting about a Generationals album. Their music is steeped heavily in the familiar—pop music of the ‘70s and ‘80s—with a modern twist and fresh production. There’s something also very reminiscent of the ‘90s on Heatherhead, the band’s seventh album, that make this the perfect record to play whenever you’re feeling down. There’s something about its incessant energy that perks you back up immediately. Favorite track: Death Chasm.

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1.	Waking Moment 04:17 video	lyrics	buy track
Oh my sweet love I know I’ll never get To remind you of The days that you regret I’ll write these letter to you I’ll throw your coffin shade No matter what you said When every waking moment Is the place where you fall Spare me your worst Maybe if I stay a while I saw you first Standing in the peristyle Find me just ten years older Not much has seemed to change How did you just forget Oh my sweet love I hear the curtain call Disabuse me of That notion after all I’ll write these letters to you Not much has seemed to change No matter what you said
2.	Dirt Diamond 03:38 video	lyrics	buy track
How could you be so cold, Eleanor Why don’t you ring us up anymore Where you been? I come whistlin’ in And I don't turn around They say I wish you don’t stay so long I’m gonna need someone to rest my shoulder on How can you say that it wasn’t worth doing Hey now don’t turn around Are you ok, dirt diamond? Take me away, dirt diamond How can you be so rich, talk so much shit I saw you get so stressed over it I know you play along, I remember the song Hey now don’t turn around They say I wish you don’t stay so long I’m gonna need someone to rest my shoulder on How can you say that’s another one down Hey now don’t turn around Are you ok, dirt diamond? Take me away, dirt diamond Lost in LA, dirt diamond Take me away, dirt diamond
3.	Strangers 04:25		buy track
4.	Death Chasm 03:10		buy track
5.	Eutropius (Give Me Lies) 05:00 video	lyrics	buy track
If you say it's not the reason, I’ll convince you Every day you talk of things you’re dreaming of When you’re so tired of broken pieces you can’t replace I’ll confess to you, I think you paid enough All this love you have You may not feel again And the things you thought were real you Can’t hold on to And if it kills my heart to think about Just how good we had To try to face the truth, you gotta give me lies All this time they could take from you everything you have And kissing off all those promises, they would love you up But close your eyes and you wake too fast, and you and I can see it Dark times, they could make you sad, but we lost souls can’t feel it When you’re outside baking on the concrete, I could lift you You and I can seal our fate With what you’re dreaming of All this love you have You may not feel again And all the things you thought were real you’re gonna lose And if it kills my heart to think about Just how good we had To try to face the truth, you gotta give me lies
6.	Radar Man 02:57		buy track
7.	Elena (feat. Sarah Jaffe) 03:50		buy track
8.	Faster Than a Fever 03:37		buy track
9.	Hard Times for Heatherhead 03:55 video	lyrics	buy track
Hard times for Heatherhead They’re cracking down on communal passwords So I will go to my grave with a price upon my head For all my days But have I told you that I would Perish if I never had met you Don’t leave me to my desolate ways I’d perish if I ever forget to Leave that life in those desolate days Got mixed up in the multiverse Came back as a different person So I will go to my grave Without valid driver’s license to my name Disappear with the evidence Talk on the phone to a distant person And take that phone to your grave With a chardonnay for good measure To your grave And have I told you that I would Perish if I never had met you Don’t leave me to my desolate ways I’d perish if I ever forget to Leave that life in those desolate days
10.	Dizzyland 03:58		buy track
11.	Mitsubishi 03:18		buy track

about

Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer knew they had balked before they even got home. In the Fall of 2021, Joyner and Widmer—for a dozen years, the beguiling garage-pop pair known as Generationals—wrapped the second of two sessions in Georgia for a new EP. They’d opted out of the process of file-sharing they had used for years. Choosing instead to cut songs straight to tape in Athens, a spiritual epicenter for their brand of twinkling tunes. The results sounded great, but they didn’t think their songs were actually that exciting or up to snuff. Why busy everyone else with the rigamarole of releasing a record when they weren’t convinced by it themselves? Joyner and Widmer scrapped the sessions, relieved. The decision, after all, did not represent some existential crisis for Generationals, some what-are-we-doing-here panic; it was, instead, a validation of trusting their process and respective enthusiasms, of releasing great records rather than churning out substandard “content.” Before the veto was final, Joyner and Widmer were working on songs they already knew passed that test.

Heatherhead is the winning result of that restart. Effortless and endearing, as settling as a long hug from an old friend, Heatherhead is not only the best Generationals album yet but also the one that, after all these years, finds Joyner and Widmer at last epitomizing their sound. These 11 songs are no-fuss, no-filler manifestations of Generationals’ bittersweet beauty, of would-be rock anthems made to feel like cozy sweaters. Maybe it’s the way the thick riff of the indelible “Dirt Diamond” frames a vulnerable admission or how the taut rhythm section of “Hard Times for Heatherhead” buoys a smitten plea, but this record at large feels like Joyner and Widmer digging deeper into the juxtapositions that have long made Generationals so compelling—distinct but familiar, wry but warm, soft but pointed. Heatherhead is the record Joyner and Widmer have been pursuing from the start.

All was not lost down in Georgia, it seems, as the act of recording in the same room seemed to shake something loose for Joyner and Widmer. With Joyner still in the band’s hometown of New Orleans and Widmer now in Wisconsin, they’d grown comfortable passing ever-evolving tracks back and forth, adding parts or offering suggestions to one another as albums steadily cohered. They’d done compelling stuff that way, too. But after abandoning those in-person sessions, they decided to commingle ideas earlier this time. Joyner escaped the Louisiana heat in June 2022 by heading north, the two rendezvousing in Madison with loads of demos. They augmented one another’s takes in real time, shaping songs that fell together like puzzle pieces. When a tornado ripped through Widmer’s front yard and left them without power for days, they took it not as a sign to stop but as an invitation to just enjoy still being the buds in Generationals, drinking warm beer and listening to an emergency radio together.

Back in their respective quarters, Joyner and Widmer went to work with multi-instrumentalist, producer, and pal Nick Krill (The War on Drugs, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spinto Band), creating a cross-country file-sharing triangle. They moved quickly, finishing Heatherhead—their sixth LP, but first in four years—that way in a mere matter of months. Despite all their fretting a year earlier about making music together in a room, these songs somehow felt more conversational and lived-in, like two old pals throwing a few back and tunefully singing of toil and joy. The true circumstances are ironic, given that, for 42 minutes, you feel like you’re right there with them.

Indeed, these are the sorts of songs you want to stay with for a while, to crawl inside of and have a look around for all the crafty details. Notice the way the sizzling little riff seems to bounce between the walls of “Elena,” an enchanting collaboration with Sarah Jaffe that glows like a woodstove in a winter cabin. Marvel at the muted funk of “Eutropius (Give Me Lies),” particularly the way the byzantine drum lines percolate beneath Joyner’s cotton-candy falsetto. And enjoy the marvelous seesaw of opener “Waking Moment,” a song that squeezes a dozen dynamic shifts and at least half as many hooks into four minutes that are as cool as a breeze. You can do this with every song on Heatherhead, limn those bits that give these seemingly billowing tunes real ballast; you could, on the other hand, just let them surround you, seemingly simple pleasures abounding.

“Closer to your death than to your birth,” Joyner sings during “Faster Than a Fever,” his voice traced by spring-loaded drums and sighing keys. “You’re gonna be upset to miss your favorite part.” It would be tempting for a band like Generationals—now well into their second decade—to let such an anxious feeling override their instincts. That might mean putting out something they didn’t love or reinventing their approach to chase a fanciful trend. To the contrary, Joyner and Widmer now have a better understanding of who they want to be and how they want to sound than ever before. You can hear it in every distinct but familiar, wry but warm, soft but pointed second of Heatherhead—a perpetually renewing relationship that gave them the wherewithal to pursue these 11 songs, apart and then together and apart again.

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released June 2, 2023

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Generationals New Orleans, Louisiana

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