Since emerging from Vermont's DIY underground in the mid-2000s, Lincoln Halloran has built a body of work distinguished by its startling intimacy. Across a string of beloved records, his songs have occupied a rare space, full of details drawn from lived experience and transformed into something larger. His writing has always been less concerned with resolution than observation: half-remembered encounters and emotional afterimages that remain long after a moment has passed. "In Hell" embodies that gift. Written as an attempt to create a more overtly pop-minded, jangle-driven song, the track glides forward on bright guitar lines and an understated melodic ease.
Recorded in Morrill, Maine, with longtime collaborator Garrett Linck, who also steps behind the drum kit on the recording, the song captures a spontaneous energy that Halloran initially thought might exist only as a demo. Instead, that first performance became the foundation of the final version, preserving the immediacy and looseness that make the track feel so alive. It fits perfectly well into the luminous Hello Shark catalog: a song about loss that never collapses into despair. Like Halloran's best work, "In Hell" understands that tenderness and heartbreak are rarely opposites. More often, they occupy the same space, illuminating one another in the dark.
