Holy Wave Five of Cups – 7th Level Music

Review: Holy Wave – Five of Cups

Depending on whom you ask, the Five of Cups tarot card can symbolize disappointment, regret, or being stuck in a past you won’t leave. If the card is presented upside-down, it can mean you’ve moved on from such things, or are about to do so.

Austin, Texas psych-rockers Holy Wave seemed to have a mixture of both feelings when they made their newest album, Five of Cups. They’ve openly discussed how, with tours being canceled and venues closing all over the world, that a career in music was pretty much a bust. The world was full of pessimism and anger. Thankfully, instead of succumbing to all of it, they channeled the energy into this record.

The weird synths that boldly open title track set us off on an introspective journey as Ryan Fuson sings about fat cats getting fatter while the rest of us spend most of our time in a metaphorical hamster wheel to keep those cats fat. For such despairing lyrics, the song is rather lovely. “Bog Song” is just as lovely, with bright guitars from Fuson and Kyle Hager throughout it. I’m not sure if Fuson’s guitar or Julian Ruiz‘s drums are trippier on “Chaparral,” but Hager’s electric piano and synths add a nice slice of 1970s psych to the already smoky track. In it, the band make references to their original home town of El Paso, Texas and both the good and not-so-good things they left there when they moved to Austin to pursue that music career that would be derailed (along with everyone else’s) in 2019.

The find the best way to ride out the bad energy of the last couple years on “Path of Least Resistance.” Be like water, my friend. I mean, the guitars on this track certainly flow and (holy) wave like those at a Texas beachfront. They keep walking their groovy Zen path (with Joseph Cook‘s bass leading the way) on “Nothing Is Real.” The past to which you’re clinging? It’s not real. It never was. The future about which you’re stressing? That’s not real either. It never will be. The dreamy instrumentation and vocals encourage you to be here now. The present is the only real thing.

We all felt some sense of “Hypervigilance” at some point in the last four years, and many still feel it. “I’m not like you, ’cause they can’t find me,” Fuson sings, wanting to get away from everyone and everything, but knowing in his heart that such a path can lead to madness. He decides to find solace in truth (“I have a secret power. I can see through your shit.”) and, again, just be here now with that truth. The sound of “The Darkest Timeline” seems to indicate it was recorded in an empty pool, an abandoned theatre, a ghost town, or a shopping mall with only five stores left in it. In other words, it sounds amazing (and gets added flair from Mexican psych-duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete helping out on the track).

By the time we get to “Nothing in the Dark,” Holy Wave are cranking the fuzz and vocal distortions as if to obliterate their fears and ours of what’s lurking outside our homes. The album ends with “Happier,” and the band, and us, coming out of that scary darkness into bright light, turning that Five of Cups card upside-down and deciding to move on from all of it.

If you’re going through hell, keep going. Don’t stop and hang out there. That’s the message of Five of Cups. You can get through it. You can emerge happier. I’m glad they did.

Keep your mind open.

[I’ll be happier if you subscribe.]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Holy Wave release “Nothing in the Dark” from upcoming “Five of Cups” album due August 04, 2023.

Today, Austin, Texas outfit Holy Wave continue to push their historically psychedelic sound with intricate, heady single “Nothing in the Dark”, premiering on post-trash. It’s accompanied by a beautifully-shot, atmospheric visual, directed by Vanessa Pla. The track follows airy “Bog Song,” and psych-tinged single “Happier” featuring Mint Field’s Estrella del Sol.

Both songs taken from their upcoming new album Five of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records.

The band have also announced further US + UK/EU fall tour dates.

On the track, band member, Cook offers: “Nothing in the Dark is about how easy it is to let fear take over and control what you do and don’t do, how distractions can keep you from the things you want or disguise themselves as what you want. But when the light disappears from your life, like shadows, the distractions fade away, and you’re left with just yourself and the darkness. So I guess the song is about moving past the fear of the shadows; you can see in the light so that you don’t end up sitting alone in the dark.”

On the video, band member, Fuson offers: “We all acted in the video, but we also did the set design and all the props. Since it was a super small budget, we had to wear a bunch of hats to afford to pay the people who were good at their jobs, haha. The director Vanessa Pla also made some mean carnitas for the crew. They were fire.”

Tour dates
Live Dates
Aug 8 – Andy’s – Denton, TX
Aug 9 – Opolis – Norman, OK
Aug 11 – Back Alley Ballyhoo – Indianapolis, IN
Aug 12 – JJs Bohemia – Chattanooga, TN
Aug 13 – Upstairs at Avondale – Birmingham, AL
Aug 15 – Alabama Music Box – Mobile, AL
Aug 16 – Continental Club – Houston, TX
Aug 17 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
Oct 12 – Constellation Room – Santa Ana, CA
Oct 14 – Sister – Albuquerque, NM
Oct 15 – Hi-Dive – Denver, CO
Oct 17 – Sleeping Village – Chicago, IL
Oct 18 – Lager House – Detroit, MI
Oct 20 – No Fun – Troy, NY
Oct 21 – Mercury Lounge – NYC, NY
Oct 22 – Baby’s All Right – Brooklyn, NY
Oct 23 – Metro Baltimore – Baltimore, MD
Oct 25 – Gasa Gasa – New Orleans, LA
Oct 26 – Levitation – Austin, TX
Oct 29 – Love Buzz – El Paso, TX
Oct 30 – The Rebel Lounge – Phoenix, AZ
Oct 31 – Casbah – San Diego, CA
Nov 1 – Lodge Room – Highland Park, CA
11/7 – Lille, FR – L’Aéronef
11/8 – Groningen, NL – Vera
11/9 – Copenhagen, DK – Stengade
11/10 – Berlin, DE – Kesselhaus
11/11 – Halle, DE – Huhnermanhattan
11/12 – Prague, CZ – Cafe V Lese
11/13 – Munich, DE – Milla
11/16- Bucharest, RO – Control Club
11/17 – Belgrade, SE – Dom Onladine
11/19 – Zagreb, HR – Vintage Industrial
11/21 – Lyon, FR – Le Sonic
11/22 – Barcelona, ES – Sala Upload
11/23 – San Sebastian, ES – Dabadaba
11/24 – Madrid, ES – Wurlitzer Ballroom
11/28 – Vigo, ES – Kominski
11/30 – Bordeaux, FR – Allez Les Filles
12/1 – Paris, FR – Point Ephemere
12/2 – Brussels, BE – Botanique
12/3 – The Hague, NL – Hink Festival
12/4 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
12/6 – Brighton, UK – The Hope & Ruin
12/7 – Bristol, UK – Crofters Rights
12/8 – Manchester, UK – YES
12/9 – Glasgow, UK – Stereo
12/10 Newcastle, UK – Cluny 2
12/11 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
12/12 – London, UK – Moth Club

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t leave your e-mail inbox with nothing. Subscribe today.]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Holy Wave release “Bog Song” ahead of their new album due August 04, 2023.

Today, Austin, Texas band Holy Wave continue to push their historically psychedelic sound in an airy, ‘90s-indebted direction on the single “Bog Song”. The dream-poppy track is accompanied by a retro futuristic visual, put together by band member Ryan Fuson and animator Joshua Kirk Ryan. It follows psych-tinged single “Happier” which features Mint Field’s Estrella del Sol. Both songs taken from their upcoming new album Five of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records. The band also have select upcoming US tour dates this summer.

On the track, Fuson offers: “Bog Song is a recounting of a trip I took with my dad in Idaho while he was guiding some elk hunters. I was both in awe of the landscape and wildlife while also feeling conflicted about our reasons for being in the mountains. I would sit in the dark, before the sun would come up, and look into the mountains and hills for elk. Sometimes seeing headlights cruising along some mountain road and I would wonder what their drivers intentions were and if the animals in those mountains ever watched headlights like those and wondered the same.”

In Tarot readings, the Five of Cups card signifies loss and grief. Depicting a cloaked figure with a bowed head looming over three spilled chalices while ignoring two remaining vessels, the Five of Cups is generally interpreted as representing a forlorn dwelling on the past and an inability to appreciate the positive things in the present. It was this card that struck a chord with vocalist/guitarist Ryan Fuson, member of the Austin TX subversive subterranean pop outfit Holy Wave, during a Tarot reading at the height of the pandemic. “I was really sure that the music world was finished and it seemed like internet aggression and, well, aggression in general was at an all-time high, so I was ready to stop playing music,” Fuson says. “It could be so easy to become jaded and pessimistic and I had to really decide what perspective I was going to take.”Rather than abandon music, Fuson and his compatriots chose to immerse themselves in their work. Fittingly, the Tarot card became the muse for Holy Wave’s sixth full-length album—Five of Cups.

Back at the beginning of their fifteen-year career, Holy Wave leaned into a tranquil realm of psychedelia, eschewing long-form jams and guitar heroics for a dreamy pop-oriented approach. As the band evolved, the early Sgt. Peppers-meets-the-Velvets sound yielded to more sophisticated melodies and tripped-out instrumentation, effectively steering their music away from sun-bleached nostalgia to a color-saturated dimension where sounds of the past, present, and future intermingled.

The childhood friends of Fuson, Joey Cook, Kyle Hager, and Julian Ruiz grew up in El Paso, where they cut their teeth in the local DIY scene. Hungry for more music and broader perspectives, the members made frequent road trips across the Southwest to catch touring bands who opted to skip West Texas markets. That wanderlust eventually prompted their relocation to Austin, but it also permeated in their adventurous songwriting and love for touring. No small surprise then that these aural explorers felt that a whole way of life was taken from them with the onset of the pandemic. But on Five of Cups, it sounds as if the physical limitations of quarantine life prompted Holy Wave to wander even deeper into new sonic territories.

Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.

Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.

As with the Tarot card from which it got its name, Five of Cups is an acknowledgement of hardship and a reminder to embrace the joys available to us. And like early ‘70s Pink Floyd, Holy Wave have figured out how to conjure a sense of profound exhilaration out of pathos, filtering dark elements through a lens and bending them into a kaleidoscope of light.

Suicide Squeeze is proud to present Holy Wave’s Five of Cups on CD/LP/DSP on August 4, 2023.

Live Dates
Aug 8 – Andy’s – Denton, TX
Aug 9 – Opolis – Norman, OK
Aug 11 – Back Alley Ballyhoo – Indianapolis, IN
Aug 12 – JJs Bohemia – Chattanooga, TN
Aug 13 – Upstairs at Avondale – Birmingham, AL
Aug 15 – Alabama Music Box – Mobile, AL
Aug 16 – Continental Club – Houston, TX
Aug 17 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe while you’re here?]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Holy Wave’s new single will leave you “Happier” than you were before you heard it.

Today, Austin, Texas band Holy Wave announce their new album Five Of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records. In addition to the announcement, listen to the psych-tinged single “Happier,” premiering on FLOOD Magazine, and features vocals from Mexico-City songwriter and instrumentalist Estrella del Sol, of the band Mint Field. The track sounds like it was unearthed from a time capsule buried on a commune in 1970s California. It’s accompanied by an appropriately dark, trippy video directed by Arturo Baston that only heightens the acid-washed listening experience.
The band have also announced a string of August US tour dates.

On the track, Fuson offers: “We had been working on this song on and off again for a while and it all kind of came together right before we started recording this album. The song is loosely a song to Kurt Vonnegut, and a song taking some of his ideas and quotes and exploring them a little further. Mainly just a song about happiness today and maybe where it was during his time. While recording this song we knew that we wanted something unique for the outro, but we didn’t really know what it was that we were looking for, so we sent the song to Estrella and basically asked her to do whatever she thought was right and she completely exceeded our vision. It really took the song to a whole new level, some place we have never been before.”

In Tarot readings, the Five of Cups card signifies loss and grief. Depicting a cloaked figure with a bowed head looming over three spilled chalices while ignoring two remaining vessels, the Five of Cups is generally interpreted as representing a forlorn dwelling on the past and an inability to appreciate the positive things in the present. It was this card that struck a chord with vocalist/guitarist Ryan Fuson, member of the Austin TX subversive subterranean pop outfit Holy Wave, during a Tarot reading at the height of the pandemic. “I was really sure that the music world was finished and it seemed like internet aggression and, well, aggression in general was at an all-time high, so I was ready to stop playing music,” Fuson says. “It could be so easy to become jaded and pessimistic and I had to really decide what perspective I was going to take.”Rather than abandon music, Fuson and his compatriots chose to immerse themselves in their work. Fittingly, the Tarot card became the muse for Holy Wave’s sixth full-length album—Five of Cups.

Back at the beginning of their fifteen-year career, Holy Wave leaned into a tranquil realm of psychedelia, eschewing long-form jams and guitar heroics for a dreamy pop-oriented approach. As the band evolved, the early Sgt. Peppers-meets-the-Velvets sound yielded to more sophisticated melodies and tripped-out instrumentation, effectively steering their music away from sun-bleached nostalgia to a color-saturated dimension where sounds of the past, present, and future intermingled.

The childhood friends of Fuson, Joey Cook, Kyle Hager, and Julian Ruiz grew up in El Paso, where they cut their teeth in the local DIY scene. Hungry for more music and broader perspectives, the members made frequent road trips across the Southwest to catch touring bands who opted to skip West Texas markets. That wanderlust eventually prompted their relocation to Austin, but it also permeated in their adventurous songwriting and love for touring. No small surprise then that these aural explorers felt that a whole way of life was taken from them with the onset of the pandemic. But on Five of Cups, it sounds as if the physical limitations of quarantine life prompted Holy Wave to wander even deeper into new sonic territories.

Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.

Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.

As with the Tarot card from which it got its name, Five of Cups is an acknowledgement of hardship and a reminder to embrace the joys available to us. And like early ‘70s Pink Floyd, Holy Wave have figured out how to conjure a sense of profound exhilaration out of pathos, filtering dark elements through a lens and bending them into a kaleidoscope of light.

Suicide Squeeze is proud to present Holy Wave’s Five of Cups on CD/LP/DSP on August 4, 2023.

Keep your mind open.

[I’d be happier if you subscribed.]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]