HOLMES - BURNING BRIDGES (2012)


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"I have never deemed it possible that some band could ever reach the musical ingeniousness of my all-time-hero NEIL YOUNG without being a lousy wannabe-copy… For those who don’t like Young’s “whiny” vocals it’s best for you to skip this article. HOLMES wouldn’t make you happy. For those of you who sigh at the sound of the Old Black, vocal sensitivity, lyrics of longing and relaxed thumpedithump rhythms á la Harvest: Welcome to HOLMES. It sounds like the Godfather of Grunge himself planted the heritage of his earlier days upon the shoulders of these six folks from Sweden here, especially upon those of HOLMES‘ mastermind Kristoffer Bolander, whose chords swing purely and vibrant in a beautifully melancholic tone, accompanied by the “Hawaiian style” wailing of Johan Björklund’s lap steel guitar and Larisa Ljungkrona’s sadly swaying accordion…

After releasing two fabulous folksy melancholic albums HOLMES have just put out their essential third record, Burning Bridges, the songs being even stronger than on Wolves and the sophomore album Have I Told You Lately That I Loathe You. Songs like the beautiful opener Brothers or Night, Bright Night breathe the typical heartwarming atmosphere of the former records, but there also new influences to be heard: All I Had In Store is so saggingly slow and dense that any doom band sounds like the musical accompaniment of a kindergarten party, Vinter bears some references to SUN KIL MOON / RED HOUSE PAINTERS‘ Mark Kozelek… But there is also a nice bunch of more uplifting “poppy” tunes: Take Where Dreams Come From, Waiting or Debris for example. The latter one was recently visualized with a funny video (see below), where the band members jump around in a quirky puppet house… All in all Burning Bridges is probably HOLMES‘ most diversified album to date with a really strong songwriting and melancholic catchiness around every corner. The only confusing thing is the very end of Captain Weakheart, which sounds like my speakers are broken… very disquieting… but nevermind: This is definitely one of the albums of the year so far!" (Katrin - Nothing But Hope And Passion)

Holmes website

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