This was the first song by No Beauty that got me. “June” could have been engineered in a lab to appeal to my specific musical taste. Singer Helena Alexandria’s voice is so distinct and the instruments and production have that perfect indie rock sound. The noisy crescendo is cathartic. It’s great:

The debut album from Hamilton’s No Beauty, No Beauty Will Remain, is surprising — not because it’s excellent (and it is), but becuase the band didn’t exist until mid-2023, and has almost no profile. “June”, above, was their first single, released a month before the full record. It’s a bold move these days to release a full record with so little lead up, but that confidence is earned: the record is fantastic.

Here’s another favourite, called “Alexandria Ottoline Endellion”:

Alexandria’s lyrics are poetic but never pretentious. Rather than detracting or distracting from the overall song performance, they draw you in like easter eggs. This is the kind of album that young me would spend hours poring over the liner notes for. The song above starts with this:

Sated, superseding every hateful notion/Pallid face, a wink thrown to the delegation
Daughter traces handheld paths of rumination/Alexandria, Ottoline, Endellion

Once I started reading the lyrics I couldn’t stop. Aside from being musically memorable, these songs have layers. Almost every track has a line or lyric that made my ears perk up and listen more closely.

The band seems to put on a good show too — here’s a recording of a live performance, from January of this year, of “Hourglass”. It’s a fantastic performance, only a few months into the band forming. The audio of the recording is great, and Alexandria is fully committed:

Saved the best for last: here’s another live performance, of the stunning album closer “Black Dog Shadow”. The album version is beautiful, but this brought to mind my favourite Rural Alberta Advantage song. It gives me goosebumps on every listen:

Look, maybe I’m the outlier here and everybody’s been raving about this record since it came out, in places that I don’t know about. To me, this album is one of the standouts of 2024, and I hope I get the chance to see No Beauty play it live.

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