War Child Records’s ‘HELP(2)’ does good, sounds great
Indie’s best and brightest come together for charity album
★★★★☆
HELP(2)
Various Artists
War Child Records
March 6, 2026
The contributors to HELP(2), War Child Records’s newest charity compilation album, include some of the biggest names in alt rock and indie — Damon Albarn, Big Thief, beabadoobee. Almost all of them go above and beyond. Still, reflecting on the album’s purpose, I kept thinking of a song by a band that is (to my knowledge) totally uninvolved with the project: “Caring is Creepy,” a song off The Shins’s 2001 record Oh Inverted World.
Is caring creepy? Mainstream music seems to think so. On the opening song of Brat, arguably the cultural event of 2024, Charli XCX sneers, “I don’t fucking care what you think.” Later tracks lionize avoidant “mean girls” and revel in the feeling of being “number one.” In Brat’s more emotional moments, Charli focuses only on herself. Although she movingly describes a tense relationship with her parents and her worries over starting a family, she makes no effort to empathize with those struggling with similar issues. However excellent her music — and I’d be the first to assert her talent — Charli XCX’s is an insular, self-absorbed mode of fame.
It’s thus especially refreshing to see so many artists work towards a worthy cause, especially one whose beneficiaries they are unlikely to meet. Like its predecessor, 1995’s The Help Album, proceeds from HELP(2) support children living through war globally through the nongovernmental organization War Child UK.
A few tracks, like Pulp’s punk-infused “Begging for Change,” explicitly respond to this mission. That sometimes comes at the expense of artistry: a characteristically literal lyric from Depeche Mode’s bouncy “Universal Soldier” goes, “And he’s killing for Canada, he’s killing for France / He’s killing for the U.S.A.” Fontaines D.C., who chose to contribute a cover instead of an original song, fare better with a pared-down rendition of Sinead O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds.”
Of the songs that mention politics, I most liked Arctic Monkeys’s appropriately-named “Opening Night,” which kicks off the album with a reference to “popular slogans and buckets of paint.” This track draws on all the band’s best assets, including pretentious lyrics in the second person (“You’re a lonely little hall of famer”), a bassline at once sensual and anxiety-inducing, and Alex Turner’s unusual ability to make any vowel both smoother and three times longer than you’d expect. The result can hold its own beside anything from AM or Favourite Worst Nightmare.
Another standout, “Strangers” by Black Country, New Road, takes a quieter route to success. Although this song is initially more muted than, say, “Chaos Space Marine,” it’s still very BCNR, and thus still special. Plinking pizzicati combine with mellifluous vocals to illuminate highly specific, slightly nonsensical lyrics like “Pick a fight with a hard-kicking dandy / His roundhouse monk shoes shine in the light.” The last minute, in which the band erupts into twanging maximalism, is particularly delightful.
My last two favorite tracks are both covers. Accompanied by ghostly instrumentals, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons brings new life to the Velvet Underground’s classic “Sunday Morning.” When she warns the listener to “Watch out, the world’s behind you,” we remember the context of the album’s creation.
But the best track on HELP(2), in my opinion, is Olivia Rodrigo’s lovely rendition of The Magnetic Fields’s “The Book of Love.” Rodrigo’s voice — full-bodied and youthful but highly controlled — perfectly suits Stephin Merritt’s alternately deadpan and heartfelt lyrics. Rodrigo and the strings section expertly waltz through assertions that “the book of love is long and boring.” With its slowed-down tempo (this version is 4:08 minutes, compared to the 2:42 original), I’m sure that “The Book of Love” will soundtrack at least a few wedding processions.
None of these songs, or the people who made them, are faultless. To quote “The Book of Love,” “Some of it is just transcendental. Some of it is just really dumb.” Still, HELP(2)’s willingness to put its heart on its sleeve, and its money where its mouth is, gives me hope. Somehow, in this embattled, inverted, heartbreaking world, these artists have reached far beyond themselves. I’ll try to find ways to do the same.