Bad Heaven Ltd. is the newest project of John Galm, a familiar face to anyone halfway versed in the Philadelphia indie scene. After time spent with bands such as Snowing, Street Smart Cyclist and Slow Warm Death, Galm has started afresh, enlisting Melissa Brain on drums, Ross Brazuk (Snowing) on bass and Tyler Bussey (The World Is A Beautiful Place…) on guitar and vocals.
However, far from being another emo-revival band and in contrast to much of his previous work, Bad Heaven Ltd. owes more to Phil Elverum and Elliot Smith, dropping some of the cathartic melodrama of previous iterations in favour of something more subtle and moving. The second Bad Heaven Ltd. album strength is a testament to this new focus, presenting tenderness and despondency side by side to craft small, often modest snapshots of contemporary life that explore some of the most pressing themes of our times. As the press release describes:
Galm didn’t set out to write an album that touched on the precarious situation of millennials, a generation lost to perpetual war, financial collapse, and the death throes of late capitalism—but in its vignettes, strength does just that.
Opener ‘inp’ shuffles into life, dragging itself from silence toward a sluggish tempo as cautiously earnest vocals whisper across the surface. “I’ll burn three cigarettes and you can call it sage,” Galm sings, channelling a lonely desperation somewhere between Carissa’s Wierd and Mount Eerie. “I’ll sigh a benediction after all it’s praise for thee.” The track is a perfect example of Galm’s ability to explore the dejection of modern existence, where the sense that the system is failing is as unshakeable as the system itself, without being heavy-handed, painting small pictures to indirectly explore the wider state of the world.
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Introduced in a sudden, noisy fuzz, ‘almost’ explodes into life and snuffs out just as quickly, the silent aftermath eventually gathering itself into a lush yet modest orchestral style. Emerging from this, the title track offers a sense of carefree abandon that sits somewhere between LVL UP and Real Life Buildings, something in the tempo and buoyant buzz of the guitars lending a defiant tone.
The stylistic variance is present across the record. Neither the wistful, melancholic pop of ‘new boy’, reverb-soaked clatter of ‘gold’ or laid back strum of ‘cross’ break the two-minute barrier, while the deep rumbling backdrop of ‘bed’ builds with a more patient style that’s not afraid to draw itself out with spikes of noise. Closing track ‘forever’ appears to strip things back entirely, a song cast in the classic bedroom pop mould of nostalgic fondness, though grows into a strikingly vivid and detailed sound that evokes a real sense of wonder.
But, uniting the themes most directly, it’s ‘100’ that is something of a centrepiece for the record. The song is about “trying to live your life while these external forces control the way we live, dictating how we move about in the world,” Galm explains, and how conditions can be made more unbearable when faced alone. “Fuck your landlord, it’s not their home,” he sings, a line which sums up Strength‘s underlying concerns—socially-accepted oppression and indirect violence, and the small acts of resistance and defiance that help us eke out some semblance of meaning.
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Strength is out now via Topshelf Records and available from the bad heaven ltd. Bandcamp page.