The inscrutable shoegaze legends return with a towering reunion album, their first in 22 years. Unexpectedly, it is their most emotionally accessible music yet.
Rumors of a fifth Hum album have been circulating since 2016, and there’s some poetry in its surprise drop coinciding with the 20th-anniversary celebration of Deftones’ White Pony, this century’s most influential vision for heavy melodic rock and something that wouldn’t exist without Hum. In the past decade, an entire galaxy of bands equally indebted to shoegaze, emo and alt-rock has emerged from the niche Hum occupied in their heyday—seen as intimidating older brothers by fellow bands on the upstart Polyvinyl label in their home base of Champaign-Urbana, overshadowed and unfairly likened to upstate neighbors/tour mates Smashing Pumpkins. Yet, Inlet doesn’t indicate a band awaiting a hero’s welcome or trying to connect with the world at large. Rather, the massive album presents an invitation to block out everything in existence and ponder the enormity of the universe.
Hum’s wanderlust for inner odysseys was evident in the titles of their two major-label albums: You’d Prefer an Astronaut, Downward is Heavenward. Inlet doesn’t evoke the same playful adventurousness; its heavily fortified exteriors are more reflective of their standoffish relationship with media attention; a decade before it soundtracked a Cadillac commercial, the modest success of “Stars” allowed Hum to terrorize the Howard Stern Show with glass-shattering volume and confound Matt Pinfield by wearing chicken suits on 120 Minutes. “Step Into You” is the only thing here that could possibly give Hum a second chance at the mainstream success they tried their hardest to avoid—mostly because it’s the only thing here less than five minutes, though the cyclical, deadpan melody, head-nodding midtempo groove and hair gel-slick guitar solo could’ve shared space on the alt-rock dial next to Collective Soul.
Hum’s legacy has largely been stewarded by acolytes like Greet Death, Narrow Head, and the Talbott-produced Cloakroom, all of whom have embraced their more funereal aspects and ignored their commercial flirtations. In that light, Inlet is essentially fan service. Talbott’s rhythm guitar, moves with the velocity of a mudslide or molten lava, while Tim Lash’s textured leads evoke water and air, replicating an algae bloom in “Waves” or a slow-motion geyser on the chorus of “Shapeshifter.” And the riffs—the riffs!—are Black Sabbath-slow and simple, like Hum really spent 22 years stockpiling and eliminating anything that couldn’t withstand at least six minutes of repetition or maintain its melodic thrust at the slowest possible tempos.
There are no strings, no Hum 2.0 electronic upgrades, not even post-rock crescendos — in fact, “Folding” does the opposite, stopping midway to bathe in beatless, infinite sustain. Half of the songs here are longer than eight minutes, so the “prog” tag they acquired from Downward is Heavenward will probably stick. It would’ve been enough if Hum had simply picked up where they left off, but Inlet pulls off something far more difficult—it could pass for the work of a band influenced by Hum, taking them in a more minimalist, esoteric direction: post-hardcore guitars played at stoner metal tempos.
Throughout the ’90s, Talbott grew increasingly inscrutable—if his lyrics had remained as legible as they were on “Stars,” Hum might have dealt with greater visibility. But for whatever reason—perhaps the threat of fluke success has faded, or age has eroded their contrarian defense mechanisms—Inlet is Hum’s most emotionally accessible album. Placed unexpectedly high and clear in the mix, Talbott’s vocals function as a lighthouse beacon for anyone trying to navigate the dark, misty and forbidding path surrounding it. While the song titles here are much less florid than, say, “Isle of the Cheetah” or “An Afternoon with the Axolotls,” they’re every bit as evocative, saying exactly what Hum are going to do before they do it. “Cloud City” creates an unforeseen nexus between Helmet and Ride, a monument suspended in air, and of course, Hum nails the sonics of “Waves.” More importantly, the guitars align with Talbott’s evocation of memory’s painful onset—“the dying landscape meets the water/and the waves of you roll over me again.” Hum are just as committed to the theme of “Shapeshifter,” with Talbott going on a Phil Elverum-esque naturalist tangent, imagining himself as a fawn and a bird soaring, “to heights unimagined, 'til loneliness turned back its hold.”
As with the comeback albums from Sleep, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine and American Football, Inlet is inherently decadent—four people taking two decades to create about 50 minutes of outrageously luxurious guitars. But Hum has little interest in making an event out of their return, declining to do any press or even provide lyrics. The newfound clarity of their sound allows Inlet to answer any questions that it might raise, a world unto itself: after spanning the depths of the ocean, the expanse of the desert and the breadth of the sky, “Shapeshifter” returns to where Inlet began—“Suddenly me just here back on the land/Reaching for you and finding your hand.” This isn’t escapism, but a meditative retreat—give it an hour of your time and return to the material world more grounded than ever.
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