Distant, rapid-fire snares echo with warehouse reverb as distorted electric guitars ring out. This is hardly what I expected from Holopaw, but I’m drawn to it at once. I remember Holopaw as a band that (mostly) created quiet, folky songs aching with wavering vocals. What happened? Well, for starters I missed their last record, the disparate Oh, Glory. Oh, Wilderness. that helps connect the dots after I realize this fact and go back to find it and catch myself up. “Academy” is a bold introduction that precedes the more expected, quiet and beautiful “Bedfellows Farewell.”
However, it isn’t only the domains of the raucous and the sublime in which Holopaw dwells. Let’s not forget that Holopaw frontman John Orth is a guy who teamed up with Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock to create a record as Ugly Cassanova. In other words, oddity is a language that Orth speaks fluently, as he exhibits on “Chapperelles Interlude.” As strange as that track is, the real peculiarity comes in the fact that the weirdness seems to bleed over into “Diamonds,” but only for the first minute until the song explodes into that same echoing
The remainder of the album continues to move seamlessly or suddenly between these divergent approaches, delving into dark country, quirky pop, rock riffs, and gentle folk. Orth always achieves these shifts masterfully, as on the album’s fulcrum “Golden Sparklers,” which marches through the first minute before breaking into full gallop. Ethereal vocal wisps let you know something’s up, but when the descending country guitar at the song’s midpoint shifts into folky dream-pop, no one could have predicted it.snare and soaring vocals found on the album’s opener. Such is the unpredictable and varied world of Academy Songs Vol. 1.
A record full of beauty and fury, Academy Songs Vol. 1 furthers Holopaw’s legacy with its sprawling and incongruously harmonious songs. Holopaw is a band from which we don’t hear enough. And when we do, it seems that maybe they don’t hear enough from us. Here’s hoping that this album buries both of those tendencies. Holopaw has cemented a reputation for itself as a band that can consistently produce surprising, distinct, and gorgeous collections of songs.
