HolyoakeEven Weather
Indie

- When rock & roll starts getting boring, overly slick and formulaic, you can always count on a couple of snot nosed kids with bad haircuts to do something that the disenchanted youth can get behind. Holyoake are four scrawny specimens from Melbourne bringing a noisy brand of garage punk that I really wish was around when I was an alienated teenager. They may be young and angst ridden, but they have the lyrical depth and sardonic demeanour to make it okay. Not to mention their vocalist sounds like he could’ve been in The Jesus Lizard. Their youth does show in their tendency to wander around in guitar heroics and rambling yelling sessions like the raucous Bank Job, but it doesn’t ever feel contrived or unnecessary. It just pours out like a Sonic Youth jam, messy and free.

Courtesy of some of the coolest guitar sounds around, they can even get away with the epic, five minute instrumental track Caught In A Barrel, a song that starts with a tapped guitar melody and slowly builds into an all out guitar riff war. The unruly racket threatens to fall over at any given moment but they never quite go over the edge, finding a new riff or just the right drum fill to keep it in garage punk territory. It’s this knack for teetering on the edge, that sense of urgency and risk that makes this album so full of spirit and energy. Case in point: the wild and unpredictable Graveyard Shift Blues. So wild and unpredictable in fact, it unexpectedly becomes catchy. The sweary, hate-fuelled angst assault is punctuated by guitar strums that cut out almost accidentally and then slam back with angular melodies to back up the yells of, “as a person you are fucking shit.” Cloud Nothings would be impressed.

They may be far from being metronomically in time or even staying at the same tempo for a whole song, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Even Weather is far from perfect, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The off kilter groove they brew up is instantly captivating, the plethora of mistakes giving it a weirdly human quality. These lads have captured everything it means to be young and wild, recklessly being yourself and shouting at the world for not letting you.

- Krishan Meepe.

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