Song: Lande Hekt – 80 Days of Rain review

By Paddy Kinsella

As the leader of Exeter punk trio, Muncie Girls, Lande Hekt appears to be on the cusp of crossover success in her own right. Having recently signed to US label, Get Better, she announced her debut full-length, Going to Hell, with lead single Whiskey; her best song to date across both projects.

Its follow-up, 80 Days of Rain, shows no sign of letting up. Opening with a hooky, Chasity Belt-like guitar line, the single possesses the energy of a bootleg recording. The production feels claustrophobic like the percussion and vocals are bouncing off the walls around you. Like the 00s indie of The Rakes and Franz Ferdinand, it is sharp and kinetic, inciting involuntarily movements and an overwhelming desire to break free. Adding to that ‘live’ feel, Hekt’s voice is muffled for the most part, becoming clear only in the chorus when vitriolically she curses: ‘This is just another string of bad luck / this is just another week where we don’t fuck’. The single closes with this chorus sounding over and over again and as you spiral in its cyclone again and again, you feel euphoric, indestructible.

A track inspired by climate change, Hekt, instead of drowning in disillusionment, transformed that anger into energy. On the final track of his seminal To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar uttered ‘In my opinion / Only hope that we kinda have left is music and vibrations‘. 80 Days of Rain is a vibration with the power to shock people into action. It deserves to reverberate far and wide.

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