We all thought that Holy Holy had hit the nail on the head with their expansive, shimmery wash of languid guitars, blended cymbals and lyrical landscapes on 2015’s When The Storms Would Come. Yet while we were singing the praises of their debut, guitarist Oscar Dawson was already itching for a change of pace. 

"I get bored easily," he shrugs. "I didn't want to make another record like the one that we had, and by the time we finished that first record — I was really proud of it — but I was wanting to try different sounds and move on." Enter PAINT: ten virile, sonorous compositions that wear the scrapes and grubby prints that come with finding the freedom to experiment. "[PAINT] definitely feels more singular. Speaking for myself, it's somewhat of a reaction to the first record. I don't think that's a bad thing; change is good!

"I'm not saying that I'm not a wanker, because I definitely am, I definitely do go down that path and I will wank on as much as anyone will allow me to."

"In the boundaries of your imagination there's nothing you can't do. It's about whether you let yourself do those things that define what you sound like. It's more about your decisions rather than who you are in some ways. We'd come to these points where we'd have to decide amongst each other and sometimes we'd have to hustle a little bit about what we should sound like; is this too much, is it too far, is it not far enough, is this us? And most of the time we decided to do it.

"I don't think that our music is for everyone, and it's not all about us — our life, our dreams and hopes. Really it's about how it's experienced by other people as well. Music is a tool for communication, so I've never felt comfortable with the idea of ignoring what people have liked about us in the past. We're conscious of that, but... you have to be true to where you're going, too, and we didn't want to make a carbon copy," he asserts. "I’ve been crapping on about finding a balancing act, but it was a balancing act between big, broad brushstrokes and bold colours and then the subtleties, and in some ways we were more intricate, more specific and pedantic in some cases."

In keeping with the title, the boys commissioned Newcastle-based painter James Drinkwater for the cover art. Vibrant and chocked with colour, it inspired a collaboration between four local artists to visualise tracks from the panoramic record on canvas. "I'm so excited that we've been able to do this cross-disciplinary sorta thing," Dawson enthuses of the Painting To PAINT project. "I've always loved visual art, specifically painting, and I think sometimes it's just simple stuff — hearing the texture of the guitar sounds and seeing how the texture of paint looks to that, and maybe that's all it is, you know? Not some big overarching fucking concept behind the whole thing. And I'm not saying that I'm not a wanker, because I definitely am, I definitely do go down that path and I will wank on as much as anyone will allow me to, but I also know that sometimes it's just simply seeing what the music inspires in the visuals."