Live Review: Holy Holy, Timberwolf, Lost Woods - Pirie & Co Social Club

If your expectations of seeing Holy Holy live were of two chaps strumming out a few pleasant folk-rock tracks on a cold Saturday night, you weren’t quite on the mark. If fact, you were quite incorrect.

Taking the stage at Pirie, the vocals of Lost Woods were strong and never fluctuated once. Self-proclaiming a ‘90s vibe, it was easy to picture these songs filling out the soundtrack to some cherished high school rom-com. One song was even confessed as being written about vomiting into a girlfriend’s bag, but was still a beautiful and charming little number. These guys sparked a good response and plenty of positive reviews were being chit-chatted amongst the crowd, not to mention getting the punters in early.

Up next was local folk favourite Timberwolf, aka Chris Panousakis. As nice as it would have been perching up front and centre, by this stage scoring a seat five rows back and against the wall was enough of a challenge. The set was filled by some old, some covered and, excitingly, some new, including fresh track Risky Jar, from an upcoming EP. Bringing it to the stage with Shannon Graham and Maggie Rutjens really filled out the sound and gave it that punch that folk-rock sometimes needs at shows. It was really neat seeing Chris use a double microphone set-up, switching from regular to super-reverbed vocals. Pretty consistently golden performances coming from this kid.

Although the musical collaboration and love child of Timothy Carroll and Oscar Dawson, Holy Holy had a few helping hands in the form of a full band to perform the last show of The Pacific EP tour. Tim apologised early in the set for a voice that was a little worse for wear, but considering how much intensity these guys put into the howling, the shredding and the drum solo, it was impressive to see they were still performing at all. Kudos! House Of Cards of course was a crowd winner and to be fair, it’s probably because that song is a damn delight to hum along to. If you had ever wished Boy & Bear were a little less clean-shaven without losing any quality in their songwriting or storytelling, you’ll probably want to check out Holy Holy live.