In the two years since releasing their second album Paint, it’s clear that Holy Holy have been making some changes and broadening their horizons. These efforts arrive in the form of their latest album, My Own Pool Of Light. The intricate melodies, soundscapes, and ever-present alluring hooks haven’t been left behind. One could say they’ve simply been given a new home amongst a plethora of fresh sounds and instrumentation.
Holy Holy’s third album My Own Pool of Light, arriving via Wonderlick/Sony Music Australia , is a twelve-track masterclass on how Holy Holy have grown into this messaging throughout the last five years, combining dizzying rhythms and flourishing melodies with some of current-day’s most important and prevalent topics – mental health, toxic masculinity, gender stereotypes and homophobia among them. “I wanted to write songs that really meant something on this album, that really had something at the core of why it was being written. Each song was trying to say something,” says Carroll on the album’s themes, and you can really feel this harnessed as the album’s punchy – yet, impactful – duration draws longer.
The first song we wrote for this album revolves around a 60s sounding vocal loop. We wanted to make it sound like an old sample and after many iterations, we got it there. The loop, built out of vocals from Ali Barter, Ainslie Wills and myself, is the bed upon which the song builds. Driving drums, menacing offbeat synths and fast tambourines back a wide-ranging spoken vocal approach.
This, and Tim’s vocal. It’s more based upon samples, and less on guitar. Faces is about a lot of things – online arguments; smartphone narcissism; the Australian treatment of refugees; and our ability to ignore inconvenient truths. It lays out a lot of the ideas that we’ve been wrestling with, and sets the tone for the rest of the record.
Pegged as the group’s biggest creative leap since the release of their debut album five years ago, ‘Maybe You Know’ kicks off the album with a steady drum beat and a sharp riff. It’s accompanied by songs like ‘Flight’, ‘Sandra’ and ‘Teach Me About Dying’, all of which provide the perfect marriage of the new and the old.
‘Hatswing’ is a taster of the musicality and creativity the duo has had hidden up their sleeve. It’s a rhythmically urgent tune that relies on the impeccable percussion to drive it along, yet still manages to maintain the anthemic vocals that fans have come to love from Holy Holy.
Vocalist Timothy Carroll comes through at the end of the record with a hauntingly slow and atmospheric vocal performance on ‘St Petersburg’. It’s one of the many songs on the 12-track album that give an idea of the creative freedom finally attained by Carroll and guitarist Oscar Dawson.
Holy Holy’s brand new album ‘My Own Pool Of light’ is out now!
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