Local Review: The Hit — Heart and the Good Chin

The Hit
Heart And The Good Chin
Self-Released
Street: 12.14.2024
The Hit = Just Mustard + Wet Leg x Radiohead’s King of Limbs

I first heard of The Hit when they opened for Die Shiny‘s “Black and Gold” show at Kilby Court in early April. I arrived eager to see Die Shiny (who I never shut the fuck up about), but I left having found a new local favorite in The Hit. From the first note, the band’s obliviating reverb filled the small venue while Conner Armstrong’s complex – yet danceable drumbeats got the crowd swaying like the overpriced front row at a Portishead show. The set that followed was a tour de force of commanding basslines, amicably experimental guitar riffs and enthralling vocals. It’s rare that a three-piece can bring as much presence and dynamism to that cramped and lovably dingy stage as I heard from The Hit that night. While walking back to my car after the show, I was already checking for the band on streaming services so I could listen to more on the ride home.

I was disappointed to discover that The Hit hasn’t released a ton of material just yet, which makes sense considering that the whole band is remarkably young for such talented musicians. Fortunately, their longest release thus far, a genre-melting 2024 EP called Heart And The Good Chin, perfectly captures their thrilling and unconventional live sound. It’s among the boldest and most absorbing local records I’ve heard in years, and I’ve been listening to it nonstop since April.

The EP opens with “Screens,” a six-minute track on which Gabi Deucher plays a smooth, two-note bassline over Armstrong’s rolling drumbeats while Aidan Benson’s fingers zoom up and down the neck of his heavily distorted guitar. Deucher’s laid-back, dreamy vocals contrast against this urgently heaving soundscape, creating a delicious tension between torpor and a feeling akin to anxiety. Near the end of the song, the band gives way to a solitary piano (played by Benson) that trickles and cascades like a cold mountain stream over the rocks of melody and anarchy until the fadeout. 

This exquisite and bizarre opener perfectly sets the tone for the five tracks that follow, which isn’t to say that any song on the EP sounds exactly like any of the others. The Hit brings a fairly distinct vibe — and even presses a different genre’s fingerprint — to each track. What I mean is that everything that comes after “Screens” delivers on the first song’s promise that The Hit knows how to alchemize a shimmering earworm out of baffling heterodoxy. 

A lesser band would occasionally fall flat on its face meddling with such arcane experimentation, but there is not a single misstep on Heart And The Good Chin. From the dazzling “Collective” to the crunchy and disorienting “if there was a man on earth who knew better than anyone, that i was ridiculous, that girl is i,” you could reasonably argue that any song on the EP is its standout track. My personal favorite, though, is the finale, “The Bore.” 

Deucher begins this song with her grooviest bassline on the EP while Armstrong holds down the fort with a straightforward 4/4 rhythm. When Deucher starts singing “I like it all the time / Now it takes me way back / Play that / I wanna hear that,” her delivery is that of a vigorous spoken word poem bordering on a rap, but when Benson slides in with his thunderous riffs and voltaic licks, Deucher switches to a more melodic style. Then the band treats us to what really sets the track apart: a heated debate between a dancey, minor bassline and a pulverizing drumbeat. If you played this segment to a clueless listener and made them guess the band, you’d have to excuse them for guessing The Smile. This invigorating motif repeats a couple of times between rounds of the song’s punchy chorus. From this high point, “The Bore” devolves into a cacophony of cowbells, changing time signatures, grungy guitars and ethereal singing before a chorus of angelic synths reestablishes order for several minutes until it too succumbs to the discord which prevails in the track’s final moments.

Absolutely devastating. I’ve never heard anything quite like it from a local group.

Since Heart And The Good Chin, The Hit has put out a grungy, 13-minute single called “The Wig” with an accompanying music video, and the song is just as intense and captivating as anything on the EP. That said, I’m begging The Hit to release a full album as soon as humanly possible. I need more. In the meantime, go follow them on Instagram @thehit.comm so you won’t miss your next chance to see one of Salt Lake City’s most interesting bands perform live. You can thank me later.  —Joe Roberts.

Read more music reviews by Joe Roberts below:
The Heavy-Hitting Performances of Kilby Block Party 7
Local Review: The Gully Bandits — Space EP

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