In the three years since the dissolution of his wonderful pop-rock group Troubled Hubble, Chris Otepka has poured himself into a one-man band with a silly name: The Heligoats. He built a home studio, only to have to tear it down and rebuild it, and he's fussed interminably over his elaborately orchestrated new songs, which sport special guests (including powerhouse drummer Kenny Aronoff) and some of the strangest lyrics Otepka has ever written.
He may seem to be courting an image as some sort of wild-eyed, oddball obscurity, especially as he tosses off unsettling lines in the ambitious "Kind/Brutal." (As in, "I wanna eat your skin / while you talk to yourself.") But in person, Otepka is as easygoing and unassuming as pop-singing eccentrics get, not to mention a wittily engaging songwriter who's just weird enough to achieve true brilliance.
"Kind/Brutal" seems to explode in about 15 directions at once: As its title suggests, it's two songs in one, but it's nowhere near that simple. As the track builds into a wall-of-sound epic, Otepka amps up the fanfare, complete with blaring horns, carefully buried discoveries and left-field insights such as, "It's so easy when you're unwanted / It's so easy to stay true." Throughout "Kind/Brutal," Otepka keeps piling on the ideas. But at some point along the way, they actually cohere, forming a bittersweet look at two misanthropes who stay together, in large part, because they don't deserve better.
Listen to yesterday's Song of the Day, and subscribe to the Song of the Day newsletter.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
