Out of the ashes of three Texas bands comes Houston’s Holy Fiction. Previous band experience has made the members a tight, professional outfit even in their early stages of development. Despite only an EP and a single South By Southwest show to their credit (a full length LP is due by the end of the year), you’d never know it from their polished, pop-oriented sound and driving live performances.
Combining the drone and delay of 90′s shoegaze with jangly guitars, soaring strings, and falsetto-inflected vocals, Holy Fiction’s music is difficult to fit into a clean category, but impossible to call anything but rock. With roots in Waco’s post-punk Ethan Durelle and Lake Jackson’s pop-punk Hemyah, epic bridges peak into percussive breakdowns that simultaneously recall Mono or early-career Jimmy Eat World.
Emo is something of a dirty word in modern musical lingo, but there was a time in the late 90′s that it was less invective when bands like Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate melded West Coast punk with the crushing power of My Bloody Valentine to create brooding, beautiful music. How that music somehow became synonymous with whiny kids in hoodies is best left to true professionals, but what is encouraging is that folks who grew up as fans of those bands are now taking those influences and distilling them into something new and exciting.
Currently, their EP is only for sale at their live shows, but a majority of its tracks, along with unreleased pieces from their forthcoming full-length, are available on their MySpace page. They tour in and around Texas, too, so if you live near there, be sure to check them out live!
Can’t Miss Tracks: More Than Ever; Two Small Bodies
What? Rob wrote an article? Nice.