Hen Hoose Collectives’ The Twelve Runs on Dual Cylinders

Hen Hoose Collective is somewhat of a ubiquity in the Scottish music scene – and no, despite their fingerprints appearing in nearly every corner of the industry, they’re neither a laundering scheme nor plotting a benevolent takeover. What they are is busy: the collective curates festival line-ups, runs songwriting and audio production workshops, hosts industry panels, and operates mentorship schemes and bursaries. Their work with female and nonbinary music professionals – notably recognised by the John Lennon Foundation – has earned them a network that stretches from students just finding their footing to industry veterans juggling projects across the country. Most recently, that web of collaboration cohered into something tangible: The Twelve, a new collection of nine songs pieced together from fragments the collective had been molding over time.

The Twelve runs on dual cylinders, a meditative and oft-minimalistic collection of contemplations – looped by a restless laurel of ecstatic current. Erratic, genre-resistant ‘Wipe Out’, with Tamara (MALKA) on lead vocals, is where that push and pull first takes shape, quickly establishing the project as one that requires little coaxing. Frizzing electronic bits bounce back and forth while intentional stereo grain gathers at the lead singers’ voices as the layering and frenetic dustbunnies of sound add a bit of a bird-in-a-cage feel to the track. While its production may feel a little synthetic at times – like the overall product could benefit from cracking a window and welcoming in some equalizing instrumentation – the ricocheting hairballs of sound and lovable DIY instrumentation ultimately override with a sense of infectious delirium.

Five-piece effort ‘Rich (Katy’s In Space)’, produced by AMUNDA, references the tragically-funny cultural moment that we definitely moved past far too early – ironically, it’s vaguely reminiscent of Perry’s ‘Chained To the Rhythm’ in its satirical bounce. As a firm believer that a song shouldn’t have to sound like the inside of a carpenter’s shop – metallic corners, industrial instrumentation, and cutthroat styling – to ‘deserve’ its political assertions to be taken seriously, the style struck as a refreshing pivot from the more perfunctory attitude of stripped-down approaches often used in critical pieces. Relentlessly disco-flavored ‘Out My Mind’ – notably featuring Becca Shears of SHEARS on the track – thrusts forward with a similar momentous, undulating repetition that causes one to wonder whether it’s going to transcend or collapse under its own weight: ultimately, it climbs over the collapsing sonic rubble to deliver the first truly show-stopping vocal feat from on the album.

‘Sirens Call My Mind’, brings Emma Pollock of The Delgados onto the track to deliver equal parts iridescent ambient and breezy pastoral, featuring woodsy flute and some of the strongest lyrics we’ve heard on the record yet. Centering on self-reckoning and cyclical desire, the contemplations are delivered with incendiary restraint rather than the spectacle of preceding tracks. Also featuring SHEARS on production, diaretic ‘Ego Death’ raises the storytelling even stakes even higher than on the preceding track with slow-creeping, chipped guitar reverberating around the slow-burning reckoning: “Standing on an island with no lightbulb / I don’t need pills to teach me how to swim / Standing on the edge with no direction / I didn’t know that I could feel this good.” If it is an ode to psychedelics, the description is airtight; and even if it’s not, the brooding, taught unreeling of the revelations make for a magnetic energetic center, effortlessly maintaining their grip for the track length.

Susan Bear-led closing track ‘Blessings on The Day’ continues to absorb further into the collective’s more introverted proclivities: twining guitar and weeping harp inhale and deflate amongst the repeated refrains, “Follow the herd / don’t be heard / Follow the lead / don’t be lead.” It’s an undeniably fitting closing contemplation for a straight-postured record with an undeniable faith in its own philosophy, which is clearly conveyed by the emboldened nature of its topical range and stylings.

While this footloose approach to genre can yield eclectic individual tracks, sometimes the EP feels a bit too submerged in its microcosm of individual ideas to fully click into place: however, when the tracks are evaluated as a collection rather than a full-bodied record, The Twelve’s stylistic fluctuation with brazen political markings for connective tissue make for a bold step on the fault line between stylistic liberty and consistently outward-bound trajectories of meaning.

The Twelve is out now