Hella Better Dancer are a new four-piece out of the UK with a knack for home recordings that don’t really sound like home recordings. Their tracks contain a polished nostalgia that usually isn’t replicated well in a home setting, but Hella Better Dancer show otherwise. Their previously released “Sleep” demo and its gauzy ’80s post-rock charm was recorded at home, as was the recent “Sleeptalking”. These two tracks show Hella Better Dancer with an extraordinary grasp of various alternative sounds found in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Suggested in the murmuring guitars of “Sleep” is the open spaces of later Talk Talk, and their infusion of the avant-garde into wide-open rock, though with a melodic accessibility that recalls Mazzy Star. The crisper “Sleeptalking” is less adventurous structurally, but sports an infectious chorus that glides alongside the specter-like vocals with ease. As the track vanishes into thin air with the concluding line “I can fall asleep…”, Hella Better Dancer’s sound resonates with a memorable mystique.
