Hey, ily! – Hey, I Loathe You! | Album Review
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Lonely Ghost Records
Spending my formative years under the sheltered, religious eye of Seventh-day Adventism, the music I consumed as a child extended almost exclusively to contemporary Christian music and pre-approved classic rock songs. While growing up with divorced parents resulted in some unapproved secular music slipping through the cracks, the floodgates didn’t entirely open until my brother and I received the first two Guitar Hero games one fateful Christmas in 2006. Those games were vital in sculpting my adolescent music tastes primarily because they exposed me to songs that weren’t strictly religious or classic rock, but also due to the sheer variety of music across their combined 111 song tracklists. Variety was – and continues to be – the crux of my music tastes. Due to insecurities surrounding my sheltered upbringing, I’ve always gravitated towards bands and artists who themselves do not stick to just one specific genre. Yet, despite how vital the Guitar Hero series was in influencing my tastes, their soundtracks weren't the only thing broadening my musical horizons.
Arguably more important than my exposure to iconic, mid-2000s rhythm games was being in my teen years during the era of Pandora, before Spotify had a chokehold on music streaming. Specifically, it was a custom radio station based on Say Anything – my favorite band at the time – that truly cemented my early tastes. This station reached beyond the scope of alternative, fostering my love for synth-heavy music via artists like Motion City Soundtrack and the Postal Service while acting as a crash course for the pop-punk and emo bands whose merch lined the shelves of my local Hot Topic store. In tandem with these early Pandora days, I was falling deeply and irreversibly in love with the soundtracks of my favorite video games like Kingdom Hearts and Sonic Adventure 2, along with the kickass opening themes of the animated shows I voraciously consumed – notably Full Metal Alchemist and Teen Titans.
I often think about how I relate to myself and the world around me via the media and art I engage with, and since the advent of social media, that has extended to how I relate to the internet as well. In their recently released sophomore album, Hey, I Loathe You!, Montana-based quintet Hey, ily! navigate their relationships with themselves and others primarily through the lens of the internet age. They expertly weave together 11 songs across 35 jam-packed minutes through a beautiful marriage of music heavily inspired by their favorite “traditional” genres, such as jazz and 80s glam, as well as various digital sub-genres and anime intro themes from the last two decades.
The first track on the album, “The Impending Dissolve of Hey, ily!,” immediately sets the expectations for instrumentation high with its buttery synth melodies and monstrous breakdowns. Tracks like “Wind-Up Toy” and “Dev Hell” similarly pack a mighty digital punch with electronic screams, guttural croaks, and devious keyboard licks straight out of a fight scene in your favorite anime or video game.
Beyond its impressive musicality, Hey, ily! maintain a throughline of human connection across the record, particularly concerning how we relate ourselves to others. Tracks like “Is Worry” and “Wind-Up Toy” touch on how hard it can be to see someone you care about suffer, to realize that having worries for them is to love them, while also understanding that you can’t save everyone, especially from themselves. “Pass The Body Dysmorphia, Please!” hits particularly close to home, navigating the familiar feelings of seeing yourself differently than how the world views you. Similarly, the themes in “(Dis)Connected” touch on how social media is just one giant vacuum of presenting only a deliberately manufactured version of yourself and avoiding the urge to spill your guts to a group of faceless individuals every chance you get. There’s an inherent danger in forging your identity around strangers’ perceptions of you and separating that from how you view yourself.
The latter portion of the record is particularly impressive in the way it ties together its thesis – how we need to face our problems and fears head-on or risk drifting through the numb nothingness of despair. Over the past several years, there’s been this heavy, almost lethal combination of becoming desensitized by the news and media, a desire to cope via simple pleasures, and a refusal to interact with the growing problems we face. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to make yourself feel everything. “whenicouldstillfeel” is devoid of lyrics beyond the song’s title, yet the somber atmosphere created by the acoustic guitar and cavernous production drifts gorgeously into “Head Like a Zombie,” which nails home the feeling of disconnection and passiveness through unconcerned guitar chords and lackadaisical drum beats.
The specific strength of Hey, I Loathe You! lies in its ability to alter and guide emotion equally through its lyrical content as well as the avant-garde musicality and its myriad tonal shifts. While I wouldn't necessarily categorize it as a “concept album,” it has a strong connective tissue that I can’t help but liken to progressive rock acts like Coheed and Cambria, specifically in the way each song flows to the next. There is an inherent sense of where everything is going, and even when the music feels haphazard and off-the-cuff, like the jazz sensibilities in the finale of “Head Like A Zombie,” there is a clear vision for where the band wants to navigate you emotionally in response to the music. It’s ingenious how Hey, ily! has fleshed out the almost nostalgic musicality of this album while the lyrics are literally screaming at you to face your problems – to not merely cope with them or push them deeper.
It's always refreshing to listen to an album that makes me feel connected to my past without feeling cloying or predatory. Like many of my music-adjacent peers these days, I listen to a hefty amount of new music, but it doesn’t always stick. Hey, ily! have delivered a dynamic, impressively-paced collection of songs that make me feel connected to my younger self and the art that has formed my identity yet challenges me with every tonal shift and instrumental excursion. There are plenty of triumphant highs and melancholic, pensive lows to go around – and the layout of those specific emotions could not be more deftly structured and plotted out. With each successive listen, I’m increasingly confident that this album – and Hey, ily! as a band – will not be lost in the stampede of constant music releases. Hey, I Loathe You! exudes the qualities needed to stake its place in the great alternative releases of the 2020s, and I could not be more anticipatory of what’s next for (the optimistically-not-dissolving) Hey, ily!
Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.
