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My Star

by The Hecks

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  • 12-inch black vinyl
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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1.
Zipper 01:59
2.
Chopper 02:43
3.
Flash 04:49
4.
Heat Wave 03:59
5.
The Fool 01:48
6.
Chinatown 03:33
7.
So 4 Real 02:56
8.
9.
Josef Josef 02:59
10.
My Star 07:50

about

Chicago quartet The Hecks have been at it since 2012, starting out as the duo of guitarist Andy Mosiman & Zach Hebert. The band drafted guitarist Dave Vettraino into the fold, a recording engineer who was recording the band's s/t debut (Trouble In Mind, 2016) & ended up joining the band shortly thereafter. The band's journey to the end result of "My Star" - their second album - has taken them nearly three years.

After recording an initial version of the album in 2017, The Hecks started gigging with new fourth member & keyboardist Jeff Graupner, whose synthesized squiggles added some welcome heft & swagger to the band's tunes. After reworking & rearranging much of the new material to integrate Graupner, the band scrapped the recordings & rebuilt them from the ground up, incorporating Graupner's skills at the keys. The results speak for themselves, as "My Star" is a gigantic leap forward for the band, absorbing everything from "Manscape"-era Wire to Paisley Park nu-funk to abstract new wave & art rock plucked straight from the Cold Storage playbook. Much of "My Star"s ten tracks are designed to bewilder; the production is intentionally disorienting, with the mix tipped toward the treble, alternating from sparse to confoundingly dense at times, but never at a disservice to the songs themselves. Opener "Zipper"s intertwining guitar jabs & synth lines herk & jerk so rapidly it's liable to break your neck, while lead track "So 4 Real"s neon-laced dayglo soul ratchets up the mutant funk throb so tightly that the lilting, melodic guitar break at the chorus is a welcome dose of ear-candy. "Heat Wave" dials it back, reveling in romantic washes of synth and flange & its yearning refrain of "It's tearing me apart, ripping out my heart again"; a captivating, slow burning ballad unlike anything the band has done before. Meanwhile album closer (and title track) "My Star" is so cinematic, it feels like the lost end credits scene to a heartfelt teen drama, with its end coda taking up the bulk of the song's near-eight minute run time. "My Star" is designed to move you and make you move, you just have to let it.

credits

released October 11, 2019

Recorded at Jamdek & Public House Records
Mastered by Mikey Young

Dave V: Vocals / Electric Guitar / Electric Bass Guitar / Engineering
Andy M: Vocals / Electric Guitar / Electric Bass Guitar / Drum Machine / Synthsizer
Jeff G: Vocals / Synthesizer
Zach H: Vocals / Drums / Electric Drums / Drum Machine

"The King Is Close" features Maria Jacobson

Album design & lettering: Studio Super

(p) & (c) 2019 Trouble In Mind Records, LLC

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The Hecks Chicago, Illinois

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