Skullcrusher Quiet the Room

In the video for "Storm in Summer," the title track from her 2021 EP, Helen Ballentine is safe behind glass while rain, hitting the window, casts shadows across her face. There's a sense of removal – she's contained, remains dry. But on her spellbinding first full-length album Quiet the Room, the window is open, and all of the rain is getting in. Guitars degrade into splutters. Pianos flicker like ghosts. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. This album is the sound of a barrier dissolving: Ballentine is ready to let you in.

The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world. As the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye so that we become the face at the window, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place.

The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us – even opening a window.