Reviews

Rip It Up Magazine

Sunday, 18 October 2009

Bad Luck/King of Palm Island' continues to delight the critics - this time in Adelaide, where Rip It Up Magazine declared it Single of the Week.

Ben Folds and Anberlin can cram it – when it comes to lyrics name-checking our town, nothing beats The Holy Sea’s evocative line ‘The body of my lover stretches out just like the hills of Adelaide’ on Bad Luck. Inspired by Patrick White, colonial history and race relations, The Holy Sea’s forthcoming album Ghosts Of The Horizon sounds so devastatingly literate it’ll probably be sold with an ISBN. Like The Drones and Paul Kelly inventing folk punk in an 1850s Victorian goldfields tavern, it’s the sort of music Augie March could make if Glenn Richards wasn’t so goddamned earnest. Having already earned Saint Nick Cave’s patronage, there’s a subliminal nod to ol’ Nick in the impending doom of bonus track Jezebel, which sounds like a prelude to a murder ballad. All this and a band member who’s a ringer for the hairy weirdo from The Hangover too!

Mess & Noise

Wednesday, 07 October 2009

This single from The Holy Sea’s forthcoming second album arrived in my letterbox with one of the wordiest press releases I’ve ever encountered. In it, the band stresses their own artistic ambitions, literary allusions and obsession with Australia’s colonial history. Such extensive baggage could easily weigh down the actual music with heightened expectations, especially since they reference such heavyweights as Patrick White’s novel The Vivisector (on ‘Bad Luck’) and the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee (on ‘King Of Palm Island’). Not exactly your average pop fare.

The Holy Sea then walk a tightrope in their songs; their grandiose, sweeping instrumentation providing perfectly-crafted, tastefully polished backing for Henry Skerritt’s unceasing streams of declamation. ‘Bad Luck’ is charged with nervous energy. Electric guitars and piano clamour for supremacy in the mix over a skittering drumbeat that explodes in a flurry of snare drum rolls when the tension becomes too much.

Not unlike The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard, Skerritt has mastered the art of pushing the songs along with his forceful vocal delivery and phrasing, constantly threatening to get ahead of the beat and thereby accentuating the urgency of the music. The singer’s very identifiably Australian inflection reinforces the point that they don’t need to look overseas for inspiration. Being Perth natives, The Holy Sea sit somewhere between the scabbiness of The Drones’ blues and The Triffids’ more restrained lyricism, but they inhabit this place with a conviction and authority which marks them as a band with a distinctive vision.

What is refreshing is that The Holy Sea don’t shy away from taking themselves and their art seriously in a pop-cultural climate that values artifice and superficiality over sincerity and passion. This may mark them as outsiders, but I have a feeling that in the long run, the voices that will constitute our artistic legacy will belong to the likes of Skerritt and The Holy Sea.

There are a lot of different facets that make up our contemporary society, and it’s good to be reminded occasionally that there are still writers and musicians who are not afraid to delve deep into our cultural subconscious and the fraught history of this country. To do this within the tainted medium of pop music is one of the bravest things I can think of.

René Schaefer
Mess and Noise

RAVE Magazine Single of the week

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Bad Luck / King Of Palm Island

(Independent)

The Holy Sea are a group that essentially sound like a compendium of Australian rock – a Perth-to-Melbourne group boasting sonic references to all our fi nest locals, without aping anything in particular. The theme of their new second record Ghosts Of The Horizon backs up this homegrown sound, tying together stories and opinions of Australia’s history of the past 221 years. Quite a goal. Bad Luck begins, continues and ends in much the same vein as The Go-Betweens’ Here Comes A City – a relentlessly chugging urban machine, full of dark alleyways and phrases that you can only glimpse before they’re gone. Maybe it’s so engaging because this paved urgency is completely at odds with the lyrical matter – melancholic and even intimidating loneliness set in the endless South Australian outback.

I think. It’s a song that needs time to dissolve. King Of Palm Island starts by immediately recalling another Australian standard, this time the laidback, bitter-tinged gentility of Flame Trees, and maybe it’s no coincidence given this song is also a magnifi ed view of a small rural town. However, given it’s a study of the Palm Island community from the point of view of the policeman involved in the death in custody for Mulrunji Doomadgee, you can guess it cuts a lot deeper than talking about old glory days with mates at the pub. The incisive ‘real’ Australia of Paul Kelly, ripped open with the sharp-toothed ocker drawl of The Drones? That puts you on the right track, but despite all these stellar comparisons, The Holy Sea have their own distinct voice, and it’s honestly exciting to know there’s a whole album of it coming.

Simon Topper
Rave Magazine

Grok Magazine

Saturday, 19 September 2009

"The Holy Sea were, in a word, phenomenal. Musically they were in complete contrast to the preceding acts, swapping punk-rock hybrids with a funked up folk fusion. For the most part their set was a frenzied performance reminiscent of early Bad Seeds, yet it was the more folksy tracks that showcased the inexhaustible talent of the rest of the band whose musicianship surpassed all expectations. Demonstrating a talent that’s beyond their years, Skerritt et al performance was both intoxicating and innovative, quite frankly they charmed the pants off me.”

Marrianne Longmire,
Grok Magazine

The West Australian

Saturday, 19 September 2009

“Occasionally there is a schism in the music world, an unexpected tremor of greatness. Henry F. Skerritt, young visionary and pending poet, displays a hope of this. With his band the Holy Sea, this debut aches Nick Cave – with hauntings of Nick Drake – and rattles the soul. Eavesdrop 1984 is stunning and evocative with brooding depth from the cello, lasting the record through. Como employs minimal orchestration but retains the soulful, provoking depth of a moody genius: further proved in Moksha. Disturbing and enlightening, Blessed Unrest suggests great things to come.”

Julian Tompkin,
The West Australian

Mess & Noise

Saturday, 19 September 2009

“A Beginner’s Guide to the Sea is the first Holy Sea release since their debut Blessed Unrest appeared in 2000 to widespread acclaim and inevitable Triffids comparisons. Thankfully, while their productivity makes Portishead look like workaholics, the quality control remains sky-high. This is a very welcome return.”

Daniel Herborn,
Mess & Noise

Single of the Week

Saturday, 19 September 2009

Paddy, There’s Got to Be One More Bar Open/Ghost Town

“Henry F. Skerritt took his Holy Sea from Perth to Melbourne five years ago and this single is their first release in all that time. What’s Skerritt been doing in Melbourne? Paddy tells you in great detail - he’s been drinking too much, reading letters in The Herald Sun, telling people about the exotic town of Perth and writing detailed pub folk hoedowns ... This is gold - bring on the album, I say”

Matthew Hogan,
Drum Media

Drum Media

Saturday, 19 September 2009

“The Holy Sea delve into the depths of human emotion within a uniquely Australian experience... Deeply reflective lyrical poetry expressing a universal melancholia over the yearning for a lost past, while still remaining groundeed in a sincerely personal and uniquely Australian experience. Stressed by concentrated and poingnant lyrics, an unshakeable mood of remorse permeates every brilliantly crafted song on the album.”

Steph Kretowicz,
Drum Media

Inpress Magazine

Saturday, 19 September 2009

“If Patrick White were a muso, this is probably what he would sound like. The Holy Sea play music that comes from a place of necessity and integrity, not anything to do with convenience or commercial considerations, which is not to say that you can’t dance to it... This is meaningful music, written from a sense of veracity above all else.”

Tony McMahon,
Inpress Magazine

Drum Media

Friday, 18 September 2009

“If you had to write a song about missing Perth and drinking too much, what would you do? No, shut up. Forget it. You cannot write a song better than Paddy, There’s Got to Be One More Open. It’s been said again and again that Henry F. Skerritt, lead vocalist and lyricist, is more than capable. Evocative, rousing, brilliant. Listening to A Beginner’s Guide to the Sea I’m going to have to agree. It’s brilliant. A Beginner’s Guide... is a way to find your Australian self again. A call to land, to community. A fear of the unknown. Slide guitars. The Holy Sea, rich in Australian history, with a special affinity to Perth, always confronting those shapeless demons of nowhere. And Shtock! It’s a home run. Again”

S J Finch,
Drum Media