Over the past few years, Holy Holy have developed their own unique and recognisable sound of jangly, guitar-driven indie rock. Taking a completely different approach to recording material for their upcoming, third album, the duo — Oscar Dawson and Tim Carroll — used diverse DIY spaces across the country, including Tim’s farm house and office, to craft their new collection of music.
Driven by vocal loops, synth basslines, and layers of live and programmed beats, “Faces” is the first taste we have of the pair’s latest project. With an album set to be released next year, and a national tour on the horizon, Holy Holy have yet again proved why they are one of Australia’s most exciting exports. We sat down with Oscar and Tim in Sydney’s Surry Hills, ahead of the premiere of their new single, and were given an insight into the production of their new, synth-heavy sound.
Best Before: How have the past few months been for you guys?
Oscar: They’ve been pretty good — making some music and living our lives.
Tim: We’ve been quite busy. We both have a lot of different things going on. Plus, we live in different cities; Oscar lives in Melbourne and I live in rural Tasmania. We chat on the phone and on Messenger a bit, and we’ve caught up a few times over the past few months and have managed to organise to get into a studio to do little bits and pieces of recording. For this next bunch of songs we’re making, we’re quite liberated in the fact that we’re not needing to be in any big, fancy studios. We can work in any quietest room, as long as we’ve got enough gear for one good mic, and that’s really all we need. Oscar is leading the production, which means we’re super light. Any time we’re together and we have a microphone, we can be working on the album; we don’t have to worry about trying to get everyone together and hiring some big space, so it’s been fun.
Oscar: Yeah it’s been really good; it’s been much more free for us than previous recording sessions for our other albums.
Tim: We ended up recording under a friend’s house, in Oscar’s little mixing studio, in my office in Launceston, and in an outside building on my farm, so it’s a bit of a ragtag collection of rooms, but it’s been really nice to work that way.
Does that make it a bit more interesting working that way, as opposed to going into a studio for a couple weeks trying to smash out as much as you can?
Tim: It was definitely very different to the traditional set-up — we haven’t done that at all this time around.
Oscar: With the modern world now, there is so much that you can do without a studio. Obviously, studios are very important and they exist for a reason, but it’s kind of nice musically to not be beholden to that. It allows ideas to happen that wouldn’t necessarily happen in the studio. If you’re just carrying around a laptop and an interface, you can then, as Tim said, set up in an office or on a farm and bring those ideas to life quite easily. We haven’t felt too much time pressure so far, and we’ve felt a bit more freedom working this way. It’s been good for us.
You’ve got the first single from this bunch of recordings premiering this afternoon on triple J which is super exciting!
Tim: I’m really excited. From the beginning, with this song, we just kind of happened upon this melody. The song revolves around the vocal motif, and it just rotates around that. As soon as we had that motif with the drum beat, it already felt good pretty early on. It was really fun and exciting to work on, and even though I’ve listened to it a lot, I still think it’s a fun song.
On this track we’ve got Ali Barter and Ainslie Wills who sing on the main motif, and we also worked with Japanese Wallpaper who bought his amazing analogue synth into the studio to work on the song with. He has this amazing thing — which is quite rare in music — which is a strongly held opinion. It’s really cool, because so many people aren’t entirely honest in fear of offending anyone, but he just completely calls it.
How does it feel to share something that’s sonically quite different to what people have previously heard from you?
Tim: Bands will often say about themselves that they’re going in a huge, different direction, but for most people listening, I often wonder how much people will actually think it’s that different. I still think it sounds like us.
It’s still got a very distinct Holy Holy sound to it.
Tim: It’s still got a lot of Oscar’s progressions and sonic taste, then my voice is still there. But I’m really proud of this work and I think that most people will like it, so I’m feeling pretty good about it.
Oscar: I would be worried if it sounded the same as what we’ve always done. That’s when people start to go, “Oh, here we go again,” and you start to become a little boring and predictable.
Tim: For me, it just comes down to what’s interesting for us.
Oscar: It wasn’t a hard decision to go with this sound. We had fun making it and we enjoy the song, so that’s great.
Tim: I think it’s so nice when songs are engaging from the very first moment you hear them, and you don’t have to wait 30 seconds for something to take off. I like it when you’re curious as to what’s going to happen in a song, and I think we achieved that with this one. It holds back in the beginning with just the motif and lead vocals, then it goes into the synths and changes up a few times, so you’re constantly not quite sure what the song is.
I’ve been listening to this podcast called Switched on Pop, which is by the New York Times. They look at artists like Taylor Swift and Drake, and deconstruct what they do, and that’s kind of been a fun thing to have in the background to bring into our writing — not that we’re trying to sound like Taylor Swift, but it gives me ideas of what we can do in songs. For example, this song doesn’t have a chorus, it’s just six verses with an intro and outro, and we got to that point where we thought if something’s working, we’re vibing it and it’s compelling, then there’s no need to conform to any structure.
Oscar: Pop always seems to get a bad name in terms of artistry and people sometimes don’t give it any credit, but actually a lot of the time pop can be more interesting than a lot of other genres. It is often completely formulated, but there is also a lot of pop out there that is very interesting, and exciting and unique.
Tim: I’ve never found pop music aesthetically pleasing to my ears, but after listening to this podcast that gets underneath it all and explains why certain decisions are being used, it’s actually broadened my taste a bit.”
“All it takes is one beat or melody that you really connect to, to make you feel something.”
That’s really interesting! So is the rest of the album going to follow in the same direction of “Faces”, or is it quite varied?
Oscar: I don’t know if it’s varied or not, actually.
Tim: This stands out on its own a little bit. It definitely has its own flavour, but there are certain themes that unite the group of work. One of the guiding principles for this round of recording was that we weren’t going to write any of the songs on guitar. Obviously Oscar is an amazing guitarist, and guitar is my main instrument, so every song we’d ever written before was quite guitar-driven. When we were coming into this round of recording, in order to try and do something different, that was one of the things we set out to do. The main motivation behind that was that, by taking away Oscar’s guitar and pedals, the progressions and the chords and arrangements had to be strong enough to stand alone for a song. Then, once we had that structure, we could see if we needed to add some guitar in. We also wanted to break the mould of just picking up the guitar and feeling very familiar with everything. So now it’s a lot vocal motifs, drums, looped vocal samples and programmed synths and beats. It’s a really different palate that we’re working with.
Oscar: For us, it’s almost easier to pick up a guitar and start with that; I’m not saying it’s easy, but it feels that way for us. We picked up guitars a couple times and started jamming, then a melody and some chords would start coming out and forming. So we did make a couple songs that way, but we’d look back on the recording of it on one of our phones, and it just sounded so much like what we’ve already done. We had to did a lot deeper to find new ideas and keep it all interesting.
Considering you’ve always been so guitar-driven, was it hard recording the way you did?
Oscar: I’d say it was more fun than hard.
Tim: Yeah, it was fun. The other big thing for us with this group of works, is that Oscar is producing. Previously, we’ve worked with Matt Redlich, who is a dear friend of ours who we admire a lot. But with Oscar producing, we’ve been doing these recording sessions that I would describe as being pretty fast moving; we’ll record different versions of things with multiple layers, then Oscar will sift through everything and pick out different sections. So it’s been a pretty fast and free recording process, which has been quite a different experience for us.
I love how you keep saying how much fun you had working on this!
Oscar: We did genuinely have a lot of fun. It was really hard as well though; sometimes you go into the studio or wherever and nothing happens for so long and it just feels so weird and you get super frustrated with it all. And then there will just be some moment, and you have a breakthrough with one drum beat or something on the synth, and then it just clicks and everything starts falling into place.
Tim: It’s more of a process of uncovering, rather than creating from scratch.
I’m not a musician, so the thought of creating a song or melody that hasn’t already been created just blows my mind and goes completely over my head.
Tim: Yeah, a lot of people generally think that. A lot of people see making music as this magical thing, but really all it is taking chords and putting them in an order, and then ad-libbing a melody over it until you find something that doesn’t sound shit, and then putting drums over it.
Oscar: And then, every so often, you’ll find something that just feels really great. All it takes is one beat or melody that you really connect to, to make you feel something.
That makes sense. So how far away at the moment is the album from being finished?
Tim: It will be out sometime next year. We both have a lot of other things — Oscar produces other records and I organise music festivals, so quite often with Holy Holy we have to look at our schedule and see what months are out for us, then we find spaces where we can work on recording and when we can hit the road. Going back to what you said, about us enjoying the project, I wonder how much of that is because of the fact that we don’t live and breathe this. We do so much other stuff, so when we actually get a chance to sit down to write and record it’s like, “Fuck yeah, this is awesome.”
Oscar: Yeah I definitely think that’s true. It’s so important music to be something you enjoy if you’re making it, which sounds obvious but it’s not difficult for a project to become not enjoyable. You put so much time and effort into it, and sometimes you become so involved in it that it becomes so draining, and you can’t see anything else except for that. It’s important with Holy Holy that we don’t try too hard, in a way, which sounds a bit weird. We certainly try really hard, but we also want to let things flow naturally and enjoy the times we’re working on it. The music benefits from us working that way.
And you’ve got a tour coming up very soon too.
Oscar: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.
Tim: When you first start in a band, it’s quite hard. Touring is really expensive — the rooms and whole production are generally pretty small, so it’s hard to get your vision out there. On our last tour, we got to the stage where we were playing bigger rooms, and it was just so nice. You get long sound checks and you can have enough support crew with you to comfortably get everything set up. We’ve had some really amazing shows with amazing crowds and fans. For the new tour, we’ll be playing a few new songs — obviously, the new single, but also a couple more which will be really cool because they’re not even mixed or mastered yet. And we’ve got Clews and San Mei supporting us which is really exciting! We can’t wait for it!
Catch the lads on tour (tickets available here):
Listen to “Faces”:
Photos by Lars Roy.