White Hills are a prolific, freewheeling sort of band. The New York space-rock explorers have stamped their name on more than a dozen releases from about half as many labels in the past six years. But they're at their best onstage, where they're loud, exhilarating, and unhinged, playing strings of songs as long as most bands' full sets. Though they're generally that way on record, too, I've never gotten the same feeling from White Hills through my own stereo speakers as I have through some bar's PA.
The same holds for H–p1, a 72-minute, nine-track album that's often invigorating but sometimes just seems endless. White Hills are at their best when they're at their busiest, as on the closing, 17-minute title track, with misanthropic lyrics, a jagged riff, and expansive solos. It's complicated and exhausting, but it succeeds through sheer momentum. Moments like these make the band's second album for Thrill Jockey worth at least one trip. Similarly, "The Condition of Nothing" is a moody anthem with a squealing, instrumental midsection; it's nasty and noisy, a passage that a band with less of a filter might have omitted. Meanwhile, "Monument" evokes claustrophobia through power electronics and stacked, broken rhythms. It's intensity is compelling.
But that lack of restraint cuts both ways. Elsewhere, White Hills include entire experimental sections that would have been better left in the practice room. Synthesizer study "Hand in Hand" is a jam with little movement, an exercise without an idea. "No Other Way" rumbles quickly to a doomy churn, with Ego Sensation's bulbous bass tone serving as ballast for Dave W.'s guitar and synthesizer builds, but then it spends its last three minutes whirring and droning through an Amon Düül II haze. It seems like an attempt to make an art-rock statement, but it mostly just thwarts the trio's thrust. Similar tones work much better during "Paradise", a krautrock heater (assisted by Oneida drummer Kid Millions) that lets up only in the last of its 13 minutes; by then, it's actually time for the band to exhale.
Despite White Hills' plentiful output, pacing remains a problem for the group. Live, as they run marathons around a riff, that's less of an issue; you're surrounded in the moment, lost in the feeling. On H–p1, though, it means you spend half of your time waiting to reach the crest.
