Disc Frenzy

With an artist name like Skullcrusher, one expects some sort of Scandinavian death metal art or the like. Instead its the performing name for American folk singer Helen Ballentine, whose second album And Your Song is Like a Circle was released last week.

Anyone with any interest or familiarity with American indie folk will know exactly what to expect here. Dreamlike compositions, floating high-octave vocals, long, drawn-out notes and guitar strumming. It is effective stuff for its core audience, but there is no use denying its enormous familiarity. Music like this is released all the time, and contemporary folk singer-songwriters are a dime a dozen.

It is not just gentle music, but deeply melancholic as well. It contains songs that sigh and wail, and which sweep with a slow, languid emotion. They rise and fall, and build to a crescendo before crashing down like waves on a rock. Sadly it does all have a tendency to fall into the background. There is not enough individuality from song to song, and the overall effect is of one half-hour, drone-like composition. It can stir emotion, and it is delicately beautiful, but it is more music one would write to than music worth enjoying entirely on its own. Its monotony is as much a curse as a blessing.

Lead single “Exhale” boasts a little more percussion that elsewhere, and that gives it a momentum that other tracks maybe lack. It is only a brief surfacing as well – by the next track it is all feeling rather self-similar again.

Of course if you are looking for a new album of a near-ambient to give a soothing background vice, there is a very good chance that Skullcrusher’s album will be a good fit for you. The same goes if you are a fan of indie folk. For everybody else, it is likely that And Your Song is Like a Circle will simply frustrate while waiting for that elusive stand-out track.

And Your Song is Like a Circle is Skullcrusher’s second studio album. It was released on 17 October 2025.