Holy HolyHoly Holy have something of an organic history, an evolution that has perhaps evolved more because of the momentum their music has created rather than a forward plan.
Timothy Carroll and Oscar Dawson initially met as volunteer English teachers in South East Asia, then, in 2011, came into each other's orbit while travelling in Europe. They began making music together, often separated by continents but their collaboration tightened, resulting in last year's The Pacific EP and some resulting acclaim. They have now released a moody, atmospheric and uplifting debut album, When The Storms Would Come, and the music has once again done the walking.
"It’s always a bit of a balancing act between letting it be itself and trying to nudge it along the way," says Dawson. "A lot of the time with the progression of this band over the last three to four years, it's just kind of happened. We’ve had certain lynchpins to our sound that have kind of been concrete, in that we keep things very natural and make it performance-based and record in the most natural way we can and so on, it seems kind of cohesive.
"But in other ways we let it do its thing. We let it grow and evolve and be the way that it is, you can’t control it, you really just have to let it happen. That’s just a by-product of who you have in the band and who’s playing, and I think that now between Tim and I and our drummer Brian (Strathie) in particular, with our producer Matt (Redlich) and bass player, Graham (Ritchie), we’ve all kind of got a thing going where it all works really well and we all understand each other."
Dawson sees The Pacific EP as an introductory chapter to Holy Holy, even as the book was still being written.
"I suppose when we released the EP that was kind of a stepping stone, I guess, at that point, although we probably had enough songs to release an album it wouldn’t have been right to do it. It wouldn’t have been the right time and the sound didn’t feel like it had been crystallised yet.
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"Whereas now we’ve written newer songs and played more shows and developed the sound a lot more and it feels like a more apt time to release it. The main thing, I would say, is there’s certain things you can’t control, but there’s points you come back to where you keep things cohesive, a lot of that comes down to playing as naturally as we can and recording and producing with Matt in a way that encapsulates that."
Producer Matt Redlich (Ball Park Music, Emma Louise, The Trouble With Templeton) has been described by Dawson and Carroll as a recluse, but actually leaves his studio hive to tour with Holy Holy.
"It’s amazing how reclusive you can be on tour, you would be amazed," Dawson qualifies. "You’re surrounded by people but you’re in your own bubble, I find that just happens. You go from being in a car to being in a gig in a little room and then back in the car again, so while being on a tour is the most social thing in the world to do it can actually be incredibly reclusive.
"We called Matt reclusive before he joined the band, he’s got his studio up in Brisbane, he lives upstairs from his studio and doing music can be a solitary activity. You share music with people, you play gigs and you play in a band but a lot of writing and practice, and Matt's case engineering, learning and mixing and developing your skills happens alone. I think that’s often a good thing too, you need that solitary time. I find that, and I know that Matt does too, so maybe that’s where the reclusive thing comes in.
"He’s definitely enigmatic, you know, he is himself, and I think that’s really important for anyone who’s in a creative world. I think it’s important for anyone in any world, but it seems to be especially potent in the creative world, because people are so strongly themselves and they have to be to preserve their identity and make art and do what they want to do. You sort of need to be staunch of yourself."
As for Dawson and Carroll, who began making music together across borders and continents, now is the time to consolidate what they have created. It seems that what has become Holy Holy could have fallen apart due to distance, time or travel, but has obviously been held together by a very strong chemistry.
"Yeah, it’s a funny thing how certain relationships over time stay together and other ones don’t," says Dawson. "Certain friendships and working relationships are held together and others aren’t, in this case it just held together very naturally. At least that’s how I see it, I’m not sure how he sees it. We write songs, and those songs are good, we think, or at the very least we enjoy them, enjoy listening to them and enjoy playing them, that’s also important.
"Over the years - we first met quite a long time ago and then spent years where we didn’t speak to each other and then we would touch base again for a little bit of music and then went apart again and touched base again - there’s been a lot of serendipity involved, too. It feels weird to think about it. It’s a strange thing, I’ve got some relationships in my life where I feel like I need to work and massage and hold them together, and others I don’t. With Tim it certainly feels that way, where it sort of happens, who knows maybe at some point in the future we will go some years without speaking again and will then come back together again?
"It's just to do with where we’re at, it's nothing to do with anything else other than that. We don’t have to try, and sometimes that’s the best way for things to be."
