Skullcrusher

Helen Ballentine pens airy, introspective songs about uncertainty and the search for identity under the name Skullcrusher. While her gentle, ambient-influenced indie folk sounds nothing like her moniker, it hints at soul-destroying feelings of darkness and emptiness. The Skullcrusher EP, Ballentine’s first collection of songs, quickly earned acclaim when it appeared in 2020. Inspired by memories of her childhood, the project’s full-length debut, the Andrew Sarlo-produced Quiet the Room, followed in 2022.
Originally from Upstate New York, Ballentine started playing piano as a child, and guitar as a high school student. She moved to Los Angeles and earned a degree in graphic design, but while working full-time in a gallery, she became dissatisfied with her career path and quit her job. Instead, she decided to pursue music, and began developing her first songs. Working with producer and musician Noah Weinman, she recorded a self-titled EP as Skullcrusher, and Secretly Canadian released it in July 2020.
It was well-received, and Ballentine wrote the bulk of Skullcrusher’s debut album alone in her Los Angeles apartment amid unusual heat in the summer of 2021. Vivid memories of her childhood in Mount Vernon, New York, were her main inspiration. When it came time to record the songs, she and Weinman enlisted producer Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Hovvdy) to join them at Chicken Shack, a studio on a farm in the Hudson Valley. The resulting 14-song Quiet the Room arrived on Secretly Canadian in October 2022. ~ Paul Simpson & Marcy Donelson