Album Review: Holy Esque – ‘At Hope’s Ravine’


At Hopes Ravine




Wouldn’t it be nice, every now and then, to be able to bang a broom handle up at the sky to see if a little old man with a hoary beard falls out?

The one you can blame for the all the world’s evils and then promise with crossed fingers behind your back to go to his house every Sunday with shiny shoes on if he’ll just make your lottery numbers come up when it’s on a gazillion-rollover. Praise ye the Lord, it would.

Unless you’re Holy Esque. When asked about the meaning of the band’s name, frontman Pat Hynes likened it to the “natural imperfectness of human nature”. A suggestion, then, that for them God is a Voltarian invention of a congenitally needy humanity, and that any vertical stick prodding will end in a mushy hat of dirty protests from rattled pigeons and not much else.

The Glaswegian four-piece, on the cusp of releasing their debut album ‘At Hope’s Ravine‘, also make use of a geometrical white and gold logo that the Gestalt in us tells us is a crucifix. These boys know how to prick attention with a bit of the blessed, even when beliefs are as pagan as ever and the Pope is busy slapping down Donald Trump and his obnoxious ways.

The band’s USP undoubtedly lies in Hynes’s singing. If his guttural vocals ever commit a crime they’ll stick out like a sore throat in a line-up. John Lennon‘s hoarse performance of ‘Twist and Shout‘ was all the more impressive given he had a cold, but that was one song. Hynes maintains his sandpaper larynx from opener ‘Prism‘, a chorus-free growl of guitars and industrial drums, through to last number ‘At Hope’s Ravine‘, a slightly flat end to an album puffed up with enough gains to wonder why it’s taken them five years to release an album in the first place.

On at least page three of the Indie Handbook, right before it promotes taking moody-looking group photos to exhibit aloofness (box ticked here), it advises bands to try and come up with an anthem. Something with sticking power once all the vanilla sounds of endless other guitar bands have wilted away inside a fan’s fickle music collection (this is the age of quick fix-Spotify after all). Holy Esque have heeded and let out ‘Tear‘. However indecipherable to the casual ear the huge chorus is, its quality will hold a festival crowd’s collective calls for successions of muddy fields to come.

A more lucid moment is found on ‘Rose‘ when Hynes shivers out, “God knows I’m cold, lying I’m here with my Rose”, only with a much deeper conviction than when Snow Patrol pestered you to lie down with them instead ten years ago. ‘Doll House‘ is The Killers‘ ‘Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll‘ for the post-Millennials and the cue to squeeze friends, lovers and slobber uncontrollably into their ears that, though you are heinously drunk, you love them forever. We’ve all done it.

Covenant (III)‘s sluggish synths and guitar lines are all about the atmosphere, while ‘My Wilderness‘ staccato notes sulk up and down like The XX (a similar story on ‘Strange‘) as the melody sneaks along until it lands on a more familiar, straightforward chorus.

Though it feels noughties indie-by-numbers at many turns, when a band sounds like they mean it and leave a coil of je ne sais quoi in you, like Holy Esque, you eventually turn with them at most numbers.



(Steven White)


Learn More