With a band that cobbles their sound together from a huge variety of equipment, ranging from cheap keyboards and scuffed guitar pedals to toy laser guns and children’s beat boxes, you may be surprised that they’d manage to release one album, never mind two.
But after their 2005 fully improvised debut, and a hard drive failure that lost all of their material earlier this year, Toronto’s Holy Fuck have released a recording that improves on capturing the effect of their now famous live shows. Their reasons for forming may have begun under a “no songwriting, no rehearsal” context, but the sometimes fickle, trend-chasing nature of the press and audiences have led to demands that the band couldn’t contain.
The result is shown on their second full length, which comes after their short EP released last year. Simply called “LP”, the new record has been assembled from a collection of live, one-off recording sessions. In the case of frenetic opener “Super Inuit”, the song was plucked from a !!! support slot, and it gives a good idea of what the band get up to live.
Once you get past the first track’s climaxing introduction, the album’s music is relentless.
“Milkshake” (no, not the Kelis one) is a slightly raw affair, with occasional vocal mumblings by front man Brian Borcherdt. “Safari” begins with a loop of what sounds like an old Nintendo (and quite possibly might be), then flies through 4 – plus minutes with an almost Lightning Bolt-esque tone, the drum beat barely holding it all together through the layers of feedback.
The biggest surprise on the album is “Lovely Allan”, the closest thing they’ve done to a song so far. After a quick backwards keyboard burst, it flips around and builds until it all kicks off, reminiscent of Lemon Jelly’s “The Staunton Lick”. The keyboard sample, constant against the brutality of the bassline and clouds of ambient noise, becomes more prominent. In effect, making the track sound poppier. Add to that a violinist, in the form of Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett, and you have a contender for the album’s standout.
Another standout track is “The Pulse”, being the only song that goes on for over five minutes. Compare that to their debut, where only two songs were UNDER the five minute mark, and you start to notice the band’s developments in their focus.
So what started as collaboration between a By Divine Right sideman and an unknown sound engineer from Hamilton has filled out, with a rhythm section that seems to be less elastic than the previous constantly rotating line-ups. With this, they’ve released an album that is a statement of intent, showing a young band that is quickly evolving. At nine songs and just over half a hour, “LP” is the first cd the band haven’t released themselves; the Young Turks label will handle the band in North America, while indie label XL are looking after them in the UK. This may see a significant increase in the band’s publicity – look out for pensioners being horrified when posters start appearing on street corners – though hopefully the band can continue with moving on from the initial hype surrounding them.
Let’s just hope they remember to back-up their hard-drives this time.
last song i heard – “don’t tell me to do the maths” – los campesinos
