HOLY – All These Worlds Are Yours
Endlessly tinkering with the dense psych-pop layers of his second LP All These Worlds Are Yours, Hannes Ferm reputedly worked on alone night after long Stockholm night and even after his producer has gone home in order to complete the album to his total satisfaction. Nominally also a concept album about mankind’s relationship with the dark (star-gazing, sleep, dream and extra-terrestrial wonder included), it’s consequently also quite an indulgent one, the album’s busy mix veering capriciously from glam to prog to pop-rock opera often within the same lengthy song. Yet, with so much going on, it’s curious that there isn’t all that much on which to remark.
For all its lush, widescreen melodies, All These Worlds Are Yours lacks narrative direction; it’s muddled, soupy, bewildering, overlong, sometimes enjoyable and just as often frustrating. Ironically Ferm is at his best though when he dials some of himself back, such as on “Heard Her”, a latter-day Horrors sort of psych-pop day-dream heavy on the fuzz pedals and synth. Similarly the relatively simple “Wish ㍛”, a sky-high cascade of quite glorious vocal harmonies and synth lasers, would make Wayne Coyne proud. The title track too may start in luxuriously appointed, string-and-piano-led singer-songwriting, but it ramps up quickly for a full-on kitchen-sink finale that it as chaotic as it is confused.
The opening run of tracks really takes the biscuit though, a retro suite that sounds like The Lemon Twigs but even more grandiose and frequently more stoned. Ferm’s dreamy vocal just about ties the orchestral composition together, but psychedelic swirl, organ drone and motorik drag the run off into a hallucinogenic sequence where everything is soft-edged, pastel-shaded and unsettlingly friendly before the inevitable comedown arrives. All These Worlds Are Yours later closes out with “In Lack Of Light”, a big proggy opus that fades out as if Ferm is drifting back into the dark reaches of the cosmos from whence he probably likes to think he came. Problem is though that with all his meddling and overcooked ideas, the legacy he leaves is often more alienating than alien.
Best track: “Heard Her”
~All These Worlds Are Yours is released January 26th 2018 via PNKSLM.~