Words Unbroken

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Here are my two Helen Horal anecdotes:

I first met Helen on November 16, 2006—the night that she won the First Amendment Writes competition at Starr Hill. Horal plugged her acoustic guitar into an amp in a back room at the Biltmore and ran through a victorious-if-giddy rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Up there with Nirvana’s “Come As You Are,” this is one of the first songs that every passing, disinterested guitarist learns. Color me skeptical.

I ran into Helen again a few weeks ago at Orbit’s Billiards before a set by Sparky’s Flaw, and we played a little game to pass the time until the main act called, “What does the opening band sound like?” “Stephen Malkmus,” Horal answers, naming the former Pavement frontman and current solo artist, then carries on to talk about her love for Malkmus’ indie pop gem, “Jenny & the Ess-Dog.”

Worldly (if local) musician Helen Horal covers her bases on her pristine new record, Words Unbroken.

These two ideas of Horal—marketable and clever, aspiring to mass appeal while holding the wheel of her creative drive— meld during the fifth track of Horal’s new record, Words Unbroken. A cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” Horal’s breathy voice washes across trip-hop drum beats, staggered electric arpeggios and a beautifully unsteady guitar solo courtesy of Sam Wilson (Sons of Bill).

Perhaps the greatest hurdle that Horal leaps is that tiger-trap “singer-songwriter” categorization, the phrase that lumps Sheryl Crow into Jewel into Sarah McLachlan while music fans shudder and recoil. Horal has orchestral ambitions: “No Words,” the album’s standout track, casts fuzzy, digital drum beats across a chugging guitar line while echoes of Horal’s delicate chorus rise and fall, soundwaves rendered visible then obliterated. The album is perfectly sequenced, with Horal’s First Amendment winner, “Old Eyes,” coming next, a huge deceleration but a song equally impressive in its sonic elements—acoustic strum less bright, coupled with electric guitar fills that flicker miles away.

At times, Words Unbroken seems graced with an aural attention deficit disorder, as if Horal were deftly arranging the sum of every influence into a pop patchwork. The sparse keyboard-and-vox track, “Eskimo,” gives way two songs later to “Equator,” which tosses a mandolin and bongos into the mix for a rhythm that can’t help but recall the musician that Miller’s made, Dave Matthews. One song later—”You Had Time”—and Horal offers a breezy standard that is at once, miraculously, Natalie Merchant meets indie siren Feist. Elsewhere, Horal channels Imogen Heap or electro-pop act Portishead, while Wilson’s guitar recalls Joe Walsh of the Eagles and Nels Cline of Wilco.

Horal’s ability to ransack and draw inspiration from every annal of pop music seems so simple, yet even guessing at comparisons leaves me exhausted in the effort. What does Helen Horal sound like? A pro.