Holler, Wild Rose! - Our Little Hymnal

 

Slow trains rumbling across empty plains, heat shimmers on desert highways, footprints on mountain top snow, part stencilled driftwood bobbing in the Atlantic, sickly sweet breezes in summer orchards. Our Little Hymnal is an album of vast spaces, hazy moments of anticipation preceding dark swirling storms, beautiful, brooding and mesmerising.

Forgive me for coming on strong, but since the opening track on Our Little Hymnal, Holler, Wild Rose! leaps so abruptly in to the heart and soul of this New Jersey septet, I thought I'd follow suit. It's surprisingly liberating. 

The band apparently named themselves after this opening track as it sums them up so perfectly and you can see where they're coming from. Relentless, crashing guitars backed by echoing vocals eventually, and stubbornly give way to the emotive vocals and sinuous guitars that define the rest of the album, before rising slowly back to a boiling and tumultuous end. This is Holler, Wild Rose! 

After the epic opener a little breather, with the first of three Selahs (like a little musical interlude, or even an Amen). Whilst the indulgences of artists in between tracks and secret (read crappy) bonus tracks can often make you reach for the skip button, they work a treat here, giving your head a rest and taking you on a momentary ride all of its own.

The sense of purpose and confidence is astounding, with banjos, slide guitars, percussion, mistreated pianos and clunking tape loops all pilling into the chaos, to create something rich, colorful and often sublime. From the dense, heavy revolvings of Marylawn Hair, to the desolate ode Captive Train and the slow, chiming guitars and empty spaces of Poor In Spirit, Our Little Hymnal weaves its way through a heady, delicate and sometimes cacophonous pilgrimage.

There are touches of Sigur Ros to the soundscapes, a sprinkling of the fairytale world of Dawn of the Replicants, and on occasion  we glide to heart wrenching peaks and climaxes thanks in no small part to voice of John Mosloskie. Think Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. Nowhere is this more profound than in the delicate and heartfelt Color That Sky. Like the lights on your birthday cake the morning glows. In a shine to commemorate what you are pines Moloskie in a voice just above a whisper before the songs overflows to an ecstatic end. It's the portrait of a lovers heart surrendered completely and whoever inspired it should be pretty chuffed! 

Shall we do the traditional paragraph of criticism for balance and to leave a convenient escape route? No lets not. Lets leave where we started, with empty spaces and a sense of things unsaid.

8/10 

Dan MuHead

Our Little Hymnal is out now on Backlight Records

Get it from iTunes

More Holler, Wild Rose! at www.hollerwildrose.com  

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