halfway up a jagged hill

BIOGRAPHY

Devin Gilbert and Jeb Polstein were walking in the woods one January night, looking for owls, when they came across what can only be described as a witch hut. Stacked between bare trees, the pile of sticks framed a void that swallowed any moonlight bouncing off the frozen ground. What mysteries crouched inside? The two friends found no owls that night. But as halfway up a jagged hill, Gilbert and Polstein continue to look. 

The witch hut became the album art for the Brooklyn duo’s self-titled debut. Carefully rendered by visual artist Nick Corbo (Spirit Was), the art reflects a darkness and elusive sensitivity that characterizes the album’s sound. Not quite metal, not quite emo, not quite slowcore, halfway up a jagged hill (HUAJH, for short) invites in anyone who wanders by. As Gilbert sings on Bleakwood: “walk with me / through hollow trees.”

HUAJH wields a minimalist setup for a maximalist sound. Gilbert’s downtuned guitar carries weight, with distorted chugs leavened by ringing harmonics and melodic lines. Polstein’s drums at once shoulder the guitar and dance around it, slinging fast toms and blast beats at the music’s apex before receding to breathe. Gilbert’s vocals translate this musical bulk into a relatable language alternately sung and screamed. His lyrics take you on a journey from hopelessness to regeneration, drawing on natural imagery, fantasy themes, and daily observations. The result is a concise package that both bludgeons and consoles. It recalls a range of influences – Pile, Liturgy, Envy, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Hella, Debussy – but weaves them into something distinct.

Gilbert and Polstein have been performing together for most of their lives, forging an uncanny musical bond that stretches back to middle school jazz band. Since then, they have been involved in a number of projects both together and separately, including the post-hardcore band Primate House, the shoegaze-inflected Chris Sunshine, Polstein’s Seattle-based free jazz/doom math duo Macaw, and Gilbert’s experimental pop solo project Kid Dusty. HUAJH was born in 2024, when the two found themselves both living in New York for the first time in years, hungry to explore the heavier side of their musical backgrounds. After about a year of songwriting and practicing, HUAJH approached Reed Black of Vinegar Hill Sound to record an album. Gilbert and Polstein had worked with Black before while recording a song for Fish Hunt’s 2024 album Self-Taught, and they knew it was the place to bring their vision to life. They did not know that midway through the mixing process, Black would sign them to Vinegar Hill Sound Records, where they now join Fish Hunt, People I Love, and Dan English.

During the day, Gilbert works as a mental health clinician. Naturally, themes of pain and recovery permeate the album. “Silver Sword,” for instance, narrates a journey from self-harm to love. The album as a whole follows a similar arc, from the despondent opener “Obscure Sorrows” to the regenerative closer “Whale Falls,” where a falling whale carcass comes to nourish an ecosystem: “I decay wash away / Sustain love / Death’s rot smell the spot / Sustain life.” Polstein, meanwhile, is a landscape architect. In addition to being immersed in natural imagery, he thinks of music spatially, using the drums to create landscapes to move through. 

“Halfway up a jagged hill” is the literal Latin translation of “mediocre.” Though sonically comfortable with extremes, HUAJH finds meaning in the middle, in the forested slopes of creation rather than the distant peak of perfection. There HUAJH walks along, leaves crunching below, owls drifting above.