A Decade Half-Spent: The Hellp’s Vol. 1

Despite what its straightforward and inaugural title suggests, Vol. 1 by The Hellp was not meant to be a formal debut album. It’s more of a polished compilation from the Los Angeles-based electronic DJ duo’s previously scrapped and shelved albums with a few new tracks thrown into the mix. It was my first gateway into a devoted yet perplexing act that writes their own lore, wholeheartedly believes in their feverishly hyper and chiptuned sound and dreams big—like, world takeover level big. Unfortunately, that process sometimes comes off as rather arrogant and pretentious to those who reject the so-called “indie sleaze revivalist” movement. But to the young, doe-eyed fans of The Hellp, this is what appeals to them. And for those whose first glimpse into their world is Vol. 1, you get sucked in right away—no need for a conventional introduction. 

I first heard of The Hellp—which is Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy—when Vol. 1 came out in 2021, before the duo started participating in more press interviews and not much palpable information on them was truly commercially available. Two years later, my classmate from grad school, Olivier Lafontant, spoke to them, the result being a riveting feature for No Bells where he tries to piece The Hellp puzzle together as they spill soliloquies, plans of making it to a performance slot on Jimmy Kimmel one day and their goal of being intentionally pretentious. Now, they just put out their “second” album II—still including some older demos but mostly new material—which has propelled them even more into the spotlight, but at the risk of becoming a sort of Dimes Square, The Dare-like butt of the joke. Memes suggest that the men who used to “hunt and provide” are now “wearing women’s flares and listening to The Hellp,” and someone proclaimed that Barron Trump would be listening to them by his third month at NYU. A majority of the X posts that include their name are some variant of “They are so annoying, but they’re the most important band at this moment.” Through a tantalizing mixture of both upfront and disguised inspirations, Vol. 1 is the result of a jaunting experiment in mingling the electronic side of Kitsuné Maison compilations with pure 2000s dance pop. The two want to hone in a new era for electronic music. “They want to stand eye-to-eye with God while clenching the world by its nutsack,” Olivier wrote in his piece. And if there’s one thing that became clear to me the first time I turned on Vol. 1, they might be doing just that—whether you want to hate on it or not. 

Vol. 1 came out during a year where I was self-treating my anxiety by dousing myself in constant, pulsating noise. It was also during the first period of time I got to enjoy a haphazardly-collaged version of post-quarantine college nightlife, which might have contributed to my elevated sense of unease. I was working full time, over-involved in student organizations, taking 16 credits and going out—just because I could now—three times a week. I also was living in my own apartment for the first time and had a roommate and a boyfriend that seemed to be out to scrutinize everything I did. All of the online advice I was reading aimed at overworked “girlbosses” told me to take some time for yourself each day in a quiet, unassuming space. I found a twisted version of that solace in the form of a midnight radio slot at my college’s station where I blasted the most clamorous electroclash-adjacent music on my playlist—each of the 12 songs off The Hellp’s album being my weekly set’s usual suspects. 

I jolted around the darkened studio as the blown-out, piercing screams and thwacks ricocheted off the studio’s padded walls, essentially pretending I was watching Dillon and Lucy spin these songs during a set at Bushwick’s Market Hotel. This was my weekly break from the madness: generating even more energy. I didn’t have an off button at 19, and I think that’s why a work like Vol. 1 connected so intensely with my identity at the time. It’s ambitiously energetic and hedonistic, but a deep-seated, unrelenting sense of paralyzing anxiety is woven under each and every track. “The mental crisis is absolute / Slippery slope, falling into what you don’t know,”  Dillon relents on “Orange Crush.” Behind the scathing howls of an electric guitar and nostalgic blips of mechanical chiptune, there lies the paranoia and sadness that comes from watching a fleeting childhood crumble away more and more. There’s a fear of being too far gone, trying to latch onto the edge before being thrown into an endless, cyclic spiral. But a mystifying haze of fast-paced yet hyperaware lunacy seems to camouflage it all, making Vol. 1 mindlessly fun to bump if you don’t think too hard about your own life within its context. If you do, however, it makes the experience even more viscerally rewarding. 

“Tu Tu Neurotic,” from 2018’s EP Curtis, encapsulates all of these conflicting feelings through its esoteric lore-building that still possesses an intoxicating catchiness. In its chorus, Dillon chants “noumenon,” a Kantian term that describes an object that appears in itself, outside of human senses. They flip through past and present identities—at once belonging to both themselves and other, unnamed characters—trying to figure out if they’ve shed these ways or not. “Chrome heart so the blood shines on my sleeve / We’re addicted to the pain because it just won’t leave,”  Dillon sings. For a duo that seems to have been begrudgingly defined by the current culture by only their “skinny jeans and indie sleaze,” as Dillon observed in a recent FADER interview, “Tu Tu Neurotic” was anticipatorily self-aware of this through its storytelling of breaking out from predetermined looks and aesthetics, and The Hellp’s own role of unintentionally being a forerunner for a larger cultural movement. Is that young girl from Tennessee really between believing in God or Dillon? Go to Market Hotel and see for yourself. 

For me, however, Vol. 1 has always been filled with those types of cathartic lyrics that you just want to scream out, but that make you feel funny when you realize they might moonlight as well-disguised cries for help. I vividly remember the first time I played “Beacon 002” on my radio show—a joyride of shifting bass boost where Dillon shrieks and yells “Get me out of here” over a crashing chorus of disjointed, barrier-breaking guitar noise. I had a friend text me before the song ended and told me he was changing the channel because it was so loud and he was scared. I laughed before replying, “That’s kinda the point of my show.” I wouldn’t be surprised if The Hellp felt the same way with this album, wanting to release themselves completely, aware of the possible outcomes and reactions. Vol. 1 paints similarly intense scenes throughout, whether it’s the lover “who went crazy at 25” from “Ssx,” or the concept of making friends with the wolves simply because they “like that” on “Wingspan”—another track excavated from Twin Sinner. The ominous deep house track “Feel” is abstract both in its lyrical concepts and sound—marked with hyperactive breathing, clapping tracks and desperate cries for God to absolve past sins. The album is quite literally a hodgepodge of the duo’s previous lives, but Vol. 1’s exciting packaging and rapid pace makes this nostalgia a step towards what was, and still is, to come. The slow, sincere and almost-Springsteen-like ending track, “Lord Jesus,” is a sacrament of confession, a surrender from a life chained to their bygone ways; “Come for me, ‘cause I have fallen down,” wails the haunting last line. The story is finally out in the open, and it is time to go on from here. 

When The Hellp dropped their follow-up album II in October of 2024, of course I ate it up. I enjoyed its somewhat lighter pace, dance-pop inspirations and experiments with a lively, glitchy scene sound. I’ve seen the band’s thick sunglassed and UGG-booted fanbase react excitedly to the rave potential of fun tracks like “Rllynice” and “Colorado.” But there is something about the heavier and ardent Vol. 1 that I will always gravitate towards more enthusiastically, and it might solely lay in what it meant to me during its first months as a real album. I’ve gotten much better with managing my anxiety, no longer jumping to nightlife and loud noises the minute I’m overwhelmed, but 19-year-old me needed the lustral release and comfort that these songs brought me during my red-eye radio show. Vol. 1 is loudly and unapologetically anxious and existential while at the center of the party, and so was I.