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Holy Sons: Survivalist Tales

  Tobias Fischer

A pioneer of laptop-bedroom DIY, Emil Amos has been water-against-stoning at this project for two decades now, when not busy drumming for the experimental bands Om and Grails. Actually the songwriting count for this project is at the 4-digit mark, meaning many, many ideas died so that this could exist, a magnum-opus of no-BS underground-alt.

I’m not Pitchfork, thankfully, and therefore don’t have to pretend I’ve heard every note of this project’s oeuvre; what I can tell you is that it makes me want to babble things about the Eels and Neil Young in the same breath. Amos’s voice is like a young Mark Oliver Everett’s, and the dragging drone of “from Home” is like “Needle and the Damage Done,” sort of, is what I’m saying. But that’s a first indelible impression is all; there’s an odd epic sweep to the proceedings here, like a choral marriage of Pavement and Postal service with everyone wearing horned Viking helmets.

He’s opened for Devendra Banhart, if that helps make up your mind, not that a one-armed juggling midget would be the strangest thing at those gigs.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Holy Sons
Homepage: Partisan Records