the debut album
available everywhere July 13
A performance by Hamilton, Ontario’s No Beauty opens with a crash of electric guitar and a heartfelt revelation. Lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Helena Alexandria shares a deep love of vibrant stories with her bandmates, Basement Revolver’s guitarist turned bassist Jonathan Malstrom and drummer Will Fachin. The trio offers up a range that spans conversational folk ballads to heavy and sludgy alt-rock belters, safeguarding vulnerable lyrics behind sometimes crushing, always emotive noise. At each song’s core, it is Alexandria's personal storytelling and distinctive voice ringing true. Their debut record, ‘No Beauty Will Remain’, is a self-produced labor of love demonstrating precise songwriting and genuine passion for the craft.
The lead single, ‘JUNE’, released on June 6th, 2024, is a catchy and uplifting ode to summer love. The debut record is available everywhere on July 13th, 2024.
No Beauty Will Remain
01 . so do i
One of the earlier songs completed for the record, Jonathan wrote and recorded this one entirely on his own. An intimate melody and orchestral finish round out the first-taste of the record, concluding with twangy guitars and a short-but-riveting expansive feeling.
03 . Hourglass
Written in response to being reminded of the way she used to be upon getting to know somebody else, this song is a defiant defence of the change and growth one experiences after escaping situations that could be viewed as lost or wasted time trying to make things fit. A person can be a portal back in time.
05 . Alexandria Ottoline Endellion
A crushing, wild scream into the face of womanhood and the inherited prejudices that come with it. Written originally to be much longer and folk-oriented, the song evolved into the band’s heaviest, head-nodding cut, lyrics winding a narrative that explores the symbols of historical and modern-day femininity.
07 . You Died
A re-recording of Malstrom and Alexandria’s first official collaboration as songwriters. Functioning as obituary for the difficult feelings expressed on the record, You Died uplifts, conquers, and lilts through pretty melodies toward a brighter, freer imagining of the road ahead.
02 . JUNE
The first song No Beauty started working on as a band, transforming it from Helena’s solo songwriting project to a different beast altogether. Danceable and fiery, a memory of drudging love is obliterated and replaced by a present-moment careen into summer skies and freeing affections.
04 . Pharmacy
Waiting for her turn at an open mic in the summer of 2022, Helena hated everything she had to offer. She had about an hour to come up with something new. Out came Pharmacy, exactly as it sounds in this recording; an ode to the way love and addictions both have a way of blinding us to pain.
06 . taking off my clothes
Vulnerability and envy dance slow under a current of simmering exasperation in the moody and experimental sixth track. Based partially on an imagined accidental run-in with her past self, Alexandria forfeits all pretence by the end of this track, considering the ambitions and sacrifices a younger version of her has made.
08 . Black Dog Shadow
The oldest recording in the collection, Alexandria is solo here, a ghostly murmur from 2022. One of her earliest songs acts as an ending vignette to the first chapter of No Beauty. There is something unnamable that lives in Black Dog Shadow; a haunted feeling soothed to sleep by the final chord, at last able to lie peacefully.
video
‘Black Dog Shadow’ live for 96.9 Radio Humber
‘Hourglass’ live at Humber College
long bio
A song by Hamilton, Ontario’s No Beauty opens with a revelation. Evocative symbols borrowed from a journeyed life in the Ontario escarpment – a black dog, a laughing wind, a spiral shell – circle one another into a well of perennial truths, creating a connection that enchants and surprises the way small talk about the weather with a good friend can offer up an epiphany. Lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Helena Alexandria plucks out electrified folk melodies with a lo-fi grunge tone, leaning on her bandmates, Basement Revolver’s guitarist turned bassist Jonathan Malstrom and drummer Will Fachin. The trio presents a repertoire that threads through danceable power-pop to conversational folk to heavy and sludgy alt-rock belters, safeguarding vulnerable poetry behind a wall of sometimes crushing yet always emotive noise. At each song’s lyrical core, it is Alexandria's personal storytelling and distinctive voice ringing true, a ribbon pulled taut around a varied bouquet.
Drawing plenty of inspiration from the recordings of Songs: Ohia’s Jason Molina, Phil Elverum, and acts like Horse Jumper of Love and Big Thief, No Beauty has just begun to claim their place in the GTA circuit. The genesis of the band is very much a something-from-nothing tale: Malstrom, in the thick of producing his solo endeavors and touring as a guitarist with Hamilton’s Basement Revolver, and Alexandria, freshly admitted to Humber’s music program, met at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Their first conversation ended with each of them inspired and enamored by the other’s musical sense, and the rest is history. Knowing from that day that their singular goal was to make music together, they enlisted the help of Will Fachin – one of Malstrom’s oldest collaborators and friends – to fill out the rhythm section, and found that something just clicked between the three of them. Those who have caught No Beauty live can attest to feeling the love the trio has for one another from the stage, making for an always heartfelt and dynamic set.
Their opening endeavor, the record entitled ‘No Beauty Will Remain’, is a self-produced labor of love, with Malstrom and Alexandria setting off to breathe life into the group’s first collection of compositions. Featuring lead single ‘JUNE’ and follow-up track ‘so do i’, the group is ecstatic to give their all to the Ontario scene, and a follow-up record is in the works, to be partly recorded at Gordon Wragg Recording Studios as a part of Alexandria’s Directed Study portion of her time at Humber College.
‘No Beauty Will Remain’ is releasing everywhere on July 12th, 2024.