Holy Holy – My Own Pool of Light

Alternative – Released August 2, 2019 – 12 songs, 46 mins

ROZ’s album drop:

Put your god damn luggage down, don’t pack those bags yet because we’re staying in Australia. This band randomly popped up on my Spotify and I instantly know I wanted us to review it. I’m hoping neither of you have heard of them because I sure as hell haven’t. This week’s album review is Holy Holy – My Own Pool of Light.

REID

Holy Holy are another brand new band for me. Digging into new music never disappoints. Even if it isn’t quite your taste, it’s interesting to see how a new band does things. That sentiment rings true with My Own Pool of Light.

The album begins with my favourite, Maybe You Know. We get a strong introduction into what Holy Holy is all about. The vocalist, Timothy Carroll, has an impressive set of pipes and that’s consistent throughout. From there we get eleven more songs that I enjoy to varying degrees. Two undeniable things stand out for me with this album; a sound that is catered to a live audience and an emphasis on song progression. Holy Holy uses a lot of ‘voice/chant’ type mixing, whistling, clapping, you name it. It’s more effective in some tracks than others but all I can think about is how those sounds likely increase fan interaction. Very curious to know how that works for them. I think it’s cool in general but Holy Holy borders on overdoing it. More than half of the album begins slow and builds to a high paced finish. I think it’s cool to build this way but they maybe should’ve rearranged the tracklist by mixing in the slower (10) and (Frida) to give the album a different flow.

Overall I like a lot about the album. I feel there’s a lot to unpack and it’s one I plan to give more listens moving forward. I can’t finish this review without commenting on the super deep and creepy voice near the end of Flight. The stuff of nightmares.

Overall Rating – 7.5/10

Favourite Song – Maybe You Know

ROZ

This band came out of left field as my pick for this week, when one of the tracks on this album just so happened to show up randomly on my Spotify playlist.

All I can say is wow. 

These guys honestly blew me away, as a band completely off my radar and with a not so large following (yet, because oh boy it's coming). I'm not lying when I say that I listened to this album maybe thirty times in the past week. It was one of those cool moments where you hear a band for the first time and can't help but smile, because it resonates in such a way that you know that you've found one that you'll be listening to for a long, long time.

Maybe You Know opens the album up and it sets the bar. The timbre of this guy's voice draws me in and the high energy guitar and drums backing him up compliment the singer nicely. The use of reverb and delay, the panning of the instruments in the mix, the distortion of the guitars - this is so well produced that it's honestly blowing me away. Faces follows next with the same perfect blend of elements and fantastic production value. Whoever they used as their mixing and mastering engineers did a fantastic job of giving every instrument it's space in the mix (2:34, that guitar coming in hard panned right? Whew), honestly as someone who nerds out over the minor details when it comes to music production I could gush over the technical stuff involved in this album all day. 

I'll say it right now, there isn't a weak moment on this album for me and there are a lot of standout moments (lets not count (10) because it's basically just an interlude to Frida). Flight has a formant/pitch shifted effect in the chorus that plays a sort of "call and response game" with the lead vocal which really had me vibing. Sandra has it's tight 808s and guitar shredding elements, Paces#1 has it's groovy, swinging bassline. People just sounded goddamn amazing and was teetering on being my favorite of the album (do I feel Black Keys on this one? I can't put my finger on what band these guys remind me of). Teach Me About Dying was up there as well (Arcade Fire? Ben Gibbard? Why can't I put my finger on this?), and was another song I probably had on a few dozen times throughout the week, just fantastic. The boys bring it down a notch and strip their closing track of all percussion, opting for a grand piano combined with atmospheric elements in St. Petersburg. I could almost picture seeing this one live, lights dimmed down to a singular beam fixated onto a piano and microphone. Man.

Can you tell I liked it?! Where the hell did these guys come from and what the hell does Australia put in it's water? I'll tell you one thing, when music festivals become a reality again I'll be scanning the posters looking for the name Holy Holy. Thank you, Spotify algorithm!

Overall Rating – 9.2/10

Favourite Song – Teach Me About Dying

LUNDI

Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi oi oi. This week, once again, we visited down under to see if the Roos could keep serving up quality music... but unfortunate to say My Own Pool of Light by Holy Holy just doesn’t live up to the standards of their reviewed predecessors. 

The duo has created a lively album using looping drum tracks and synths but it gets messy a lot of the time and lacks the quality production needed to bring this type of music home. The ideas are there but the individual parts are more interesting than what they become as a whole. 

The album does kickoff with a couple of bright spots in Maybe You Know and Faces but fails to build on that momentum with the remainder of the songs lacking. For the majority of the album I found myself intrigued by one element of a song but thrown off by how it was combined with the others. 

Chaotic yet full of musical promise. I think the duo went for it all on this album, which I respect, but i think if they toned it back just a bit they could have refined this album into something much more consistently enjoyable. 

I’ll be keeping my eye out for Holy Holy in the future due to that presence of musical skill but the combined product here came up well short. 

Overall Rating – 5.3/10 

Favourite Song – Maybe You Know