Selectivity is the calling card of Chicago’s NE-HI. On the band’s self-titled 2014 debut, which was recorded in one of the many city basements that grew them, they never showed their full hand. Four of its nine tracks were a single hook of eight or nine words and almost nothing else. Jason Balla’s guitar lines featured plenty of space between each note, and they honk, nasal and blaring, as if their garage indie rock was designed with the express purpose of forcing their way through to the back of an overcrowded basement. The band learned quickly that their overflowing energy is best spent when pouring more into less, and not vice versa.
Offers is NE-HI’s second album and first on Grand Jury Music, and it reintroduces the band as one who plays above-ground. Coming off of multiple tours where they regularly played on proper stages for the first time, NE-HI built these songs accordingly: They sound twice as developed. The co-frontman platoon of Mikey Wells, the more verse-chorus-minded songwriter, and Balla, who on stage assumes the form of a rubber band in flight, dial up the energy between the two. Their ballooning sound is a close approximation of the NE-HI live show—the band's best foot forward—and captures the breath of the band up close like being inches away from their mics in a moldy basement.
On the Wells-led highlights “Buried on the Moon,” “Sisters,” and “Don’t Wanna Know You,” Balla’s guitar buzzes and swerves behind him, forming these hardly logical interactions that make for Offers’s most interesting moments. The album’s first single, “Drag,” is also the best bridge between basement- and stage-NE-HI, featuring a full structure without sacrificing the shouts. The abrasive instrumental breakdowns that NE-HI leaned on for their loudest early songs aren’t common here, but the one that shows up on “Out of Reach” punctuates one of the least ambiguous lyrics Balla has written: “Do you want to get along?/Say the word, I’ll let you right in.” Neither singer is one to get cheated on a single vowel sound.
Offers was completed on its second studio go-around after the first was scrapped almost entirely. The pressure to deliver—and to fold into the business of building a successful band—seems to have found its way into the songs, which can flirt a little too closely with self-obsession. “Every Dent” reckons with all the glad-handing required to get ahead in the business, and on “Buried on the Moon,” Wells takes an even more cynical look at the process: “Well come on make a record like your dear old dad/Yeah, we’ll give you all the money then make you feel sad.” The shoegazing title track looks upon the defeat of a missed opportunity with dread: “Offer’s gone/No response/I’ve been on too long,” Balla sings, exhaustingly.
But Offers deliberately ends on a more optimistic ode to their roots, a song that feels like NE-HI’s home base. On “Stay Young,” they talk changing, growing, and resisting age—while all too self-aware of the embarrassment of admitting to resisting age. “Time gets away from you / And it’s not coming back,” Balla sings. But time spent pouring energy into work that marks a new chapter, while the energy is still there, is time well spent. NE-HI are comfortable doing as much as they can.
