RC@5: Inlet by Hum

Record Club covered this album five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

Inlet

Hum

Week 75: July 5-11, 2020

I had to re-download this album, which is the first time I've had to do that in a while. At a certain point in this RC-adjacent column, it'll stop happening, because I'm at the point where I don't delete RC albums off my iPod no matter how bad they are. CANDIACE is going to be there forever. Some RC albums aren't good albums, but all RC albums are important albums, simply due to the fact that they were covered in Record Club. They are a part of me. I hate how my right heel/ankle has hurt for months now, but I'm not going to hack it off my body, you know what I mean?

I start with this point, even though it's not the main point, because it helps to illustrate the main point. The main point is that, five years later, I am much more open to all kinds of music, and much more willing to engage in whatever life throws at me, and way more equipped with the tools necessary to decipher something that would otherwise come off as beguiling. I've changed. That's the main point. Five years is a long enough time to enact true and lasting change. I've done it. I'm here. I'm taking Hum seriously.

Here's what I mean: up until this very moment, I've always lumped together Brittany's first two RC picks, Inlet by Hum and Week 32's Arbiter by Hopesfall. Ask Joe in July 2020 to tell you the difference between the two albums, and he couldn't do it. Which is fine! There's nothing wrong with that. It takes practice. It takes literally twelve hours of music-listening per day for five years straight to build your ear's muscles like that. Here in July 2025, I can tell the difference. 

They are both in the same ballpark. This isn't like grouping together, oh I dunno, Andrew Bird and Burna Boy. or whatever. Hopesfall and Hum make heavy music. Both would have a "post-hardcore" genre tag attached. But Hopesfall seems like it was starting from screamo and rooted out some of the harsher elements, whereas Hum is starting from grunge and using shoegaze to flatten and elongate. They each move in the direction of post-hardcore, but attack it from different angles. This is my best attempt at explaining what I feel inside (which, with music, is not always as easy as you think it would be).

And, like Arbiter at the five-year mark, listening to Inlet again isn't some eureka moment. I'm not discovering my new favorite album five years too late. But I listen to Hum, and I hear something I like. I can take a ride with this shit. I have that ability now. I don't have to resort to Ratatouille metaphors to hide the fact that I don't understand something. I get it now. And it's pretty good! Good, heavy music. I like the constant presence of staticky noise, it gives this album depth. I think the atonal vocals detract, but they aren't a distraction. I understand that this is sometimes the limitation of such a sound. Maybe a more nimble vocalist would push Hum into a different genre completely.

But see, this is why I should keep album around, no matter what. You never know when something is going to hit you. You might not get something the first time around, but just wait maybe four or five years and try again. Maybe it hits you differently this time. You can't explain it, it just happens. The music is there; you change.