No Album Left Behind: Still House Plants, 'If I don't make it, I love u'

If I don’t make it, I love u by Glaswegian trio Still House Plants is an album that sounds the most like everyday life than anything I’ve ever heard. Given descriptions of it across the blogosphere as slippery art-rock, reminding listeners of everything from R&B to post-hardcore, that may sound absurd. It’s cacophonous and disorienting. Ambient music already approximates the everyday with mimicry of quotidian sounds and soft noise elevates that with uncanny disruptions. If I don’t make it, I love u sounds the most everyday because its components—Finlay Clark on guitar, Jess Hickie-Kallenbach on vocals, David Kennedy on drums—sound like they work independently of each other. When Hickie-Kallenbach feels like she’s reached a climax, a pointed guitar strum grabs the limelight, followed by a drum fill that sounds so out-of-place to cause reflection. It’s egalitarian to an extreme; everyone’s contributions have an equal opportunity to punch through as the primary voice at any second. The result is a true juggernaut of emotional, artistic rock—a listen that is twice as rewarding as it is exhausting.

The members of Still House Plants may sound like they’re playing music separately from each other, but naturally, they’re in a band: They respond to each other in real-time while letting their songs unfurl into a beautiful unpredictability. As independent as we may think of ourselves, we’re all deeply engaged with each other, accommodating each other’s existences while asserting our own. The three friends who make up Still House Plants met as students at Glasgow School of Art and began making music together about 10 years ago. If I don’t make it, I love u continues the wobbly musical practice they’ve established while enriching the production to a level that reveals just how stark and unwieldy every moment is in their songs. The pops of a drumbeat on “Probably” and the woozy guitars on “Silver grit passes thru my teeth” are feats unto themselves; the way they appear to converse on “Sticky” independently of what Hickie-Kallenbach sings in her distinctive alto makes every word pop.

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How Hickie-Kallenbach either hangs on a word for an extended period or barges through a phrase as if it’s clamoring to leave her skull is especially remarkable. Hickie-Kallenbach’s distinctive voice sounds close to that of Haley Himiko Morris (Disintegration, Pleasure Leftists), a fellow alto whose vocalizations feel like urgent exhortations, delivered with a kind of anxiety or anguish that gives each song a heightened presence. On “M M M,” she drags out “called” in the phrase “I wish I was called Makita,” bouncing the vowel like a rubber ball on a concrete floor, building suspense without complete resolution. How she hangs on “you” and “me” when she sings “you could do anything to me” on “Headlight” explicitly recognizes the most important figures: the singer and the subject. Whatever relationship they have and how they experience it isn’t as important as the pair themselves.

“MORE BOY” has several turning points across Hickie-Kallenbach’s vocal delivery. Their voice soars as they repeat “body is” when singing “I know that my body is all that my body is,” a sort of clunky but poetic sentence acknowledging limits and limitlessness of one’s embodiment. The specific haunting procession through “fever” on “Sticky” is equally unforgettable. Even moments where Hickie-Kallenbach’s vocals feel a touch buried are stirring. “M M M” opens with sauntering drum rolls and down-strummed guitar that won’t hold back as Hickie-Kallenbach utters “I look up, I stood up, I hood up” in different permutations at a spoken register. Repetition within each sound and sequence of phrases makes for a kind of rumbling effect, one where tension mounts so gently you may not perceive it until Hickie-Kallenbach switches it up. Without the transition, the song would’ve been an interesting meditation on drudgery, but as the song evolves, worries mount. It’s a familiar, snowballing anxiety that resonates in a new way with each volta.

If I don’t make it, I love u is rich with beauty and nerve, stretching and compressing the vocabularies available for expressing desires or revealing anxieties. Hickie-Kallenbach’s vocals are smooth and soulful, but she can deliver as much disruption as any punk. Clark’s guitar exercises are full of character, lingering with washed reverb at key inflection points but ducking out to produce confounding negative space when it comes time to shake listeners out of their brief stupor (just listen to “3scr3w3” and try not to get dizzy). Kennedy sounds like he hits his drums harder than on any prior Still House Plants project, letting them penetrate with the precision of an Olympic diver piercing the pool water with nary a splash. As art-rock rich with improv, it has the grit of hardcore but the heart of soul that feels as hardy and flexible as a trusty windbreaker. If I don’t make it, I love u is the kind of album that lets you spill your guts uncontrollably but promises to collect them all back into some semblance of order, even if that order is wonky. Ultimately, our everyday existences are wonky, and Still House Plants’ third record speaks to that truth unlike any other release of its kind.

See where If I don’t make it, I love u ranked on our list of the 100 best albums of 2024 here.

Devon Chodzin is a Pittsburgh-based critic and urban planner with bylines at Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Bandcamp Daily and more. He lives on Twitter @bigugly.

No Album Left Behind: Still House Plants, If I don’t make it, I love u