Remember how excited you got last fall when you learned that Brooklyn-based slack rock mainstays Holy Sons (a.k.a. Emil Amos of Om, Grails, Lilacs, and Champagne) were about to release their 13th album of dreamy, hazy, AM gold-style slack-rock, entitled In The Garden?
Well I SURE DO. Cuz it was really weird, actually: you dressed-up like Earnest P. Worrell and kept asking people “knowwhatImean?”…then you went around eating coffee beans + Slurpees in place of cereal + milk…and started saving your urine in old pop bottles…and kept blowing that goddamned air-horn in everyone’s face. You were up for six days straight before you finally crashed from that Holy Sons High.
So, it’s with…uh, some trepidation…that I’ve returned today to tell you that Amos is touring the US at the end of the month with fellow sultans-of-twang The Mountain Goats — how’s you’re heart-rate so far? — aaaand that he’s premiering a brand new, never-before-seen LIVE VIDEO for the In The Garden track “Denmark” with TMT today! (Okay, okay; calm down…BREEEEEATHE…and let’s…just…put the denim vest and air-horn DOWN…sloooooowly.)
Now then; before I let you see the video, which was recorded live at Mississippi Studios (seemingly at precisely 10:16 p.m. on October 28), I’d like you to tire yourself out a little bit by reading this enormous chunk of Amos’s own ruminations about the song:
About 3 years ago, I woke up suddenly in a hotel room in Copenhagen at 6am. I was rooming with my Czech driver on an Om tour, and he’d slammed the curtains open wide to wake me to one of those pale, blue sky mornings that are super chilly, but in a kind of benevolent way. I’d never listened to Elliot Smith much, but for some bizarre reason I rolled out of bed and hit play on the song “Roman Candle,” and the dissonant woody-ness of it struck us both as exactly what the Copenhagen scenery was calling for. As we got into the van, I remember a kind of feverish home-sickness hitting me…not in a sad way, but somehow related to that sweet feeling you might have in summer camp as a kid. You’ve been having fun, but you know inside that nothing ever truly lasts and the grass will inevitably become greener again. I jotted down all the lyrics to “Denmark” very fast while the images of these tiny shacks above the Guggenheim in Bilbao were in my mind…just another metaphor for that final, illusory place you might find “repose” in. Those shacks always seem to represent this distant, hanging concept that you’ll eventually step off the mouse’s wheel and escape to some Jungian tower as a master of really just more thoughts and words that describe this same infinitely returning home-sickness.
How you doin’, champ? Okay?
Okay! Great. Here’s the clip…followed by Holy Sons’s May/June tour dates…followed by a one or two Xanax…
Holy Sons w/ The Mountain Goats:
05.26.17 - New Orleans, LA - The Republic
05.27.17 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall
05.28.17 - Dallas, TX - Trees
05.31.17 - Los Angeles, CA - Mayan Theatre
06.01.17 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
06.02.17 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
06.04.17 - Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
06.05.17 - Seattle, WA - The Showbox