Ambition has its pitfalls. A young band with big ideas and vague lyrics referencing “burning hearts” and “faces changing” risks being compared to U2, or worse; Mumford. To counter, you’ve got to bring something of your own to the table; bait to drag the listener’s mind from the horizon to the foreground. A handsome helping of compositional clout is what sees Holy Holy’s Tim Carroll and Oscar Dawson stand head and shoulders above many bands of a similar ilk, and a debut album of class, artistry and scope is the general result of their efforts. The Brisbane/Melbourne duo are fresh from the Splendour mud and recent European shows, where these songs have been going down a storm, including meandering first single ‘History’ and the pleasantly lilting ‘Outside of the Heart of It’. Just as you’re getting used to the folky melodies, though, they hit you with the atypical ‘You Cannot Call for Love Like a Dog’. An all-dominating dual-guitar T-Rex of a track, its soaring lead lines and solos are easily the highlight of the album, and make you wish the band would take a trip down to Shredtown more often. ‘Pretty Strays For Hopeless Lovers’ gets close to the same level of prodigious picking, but, having peaked at track six, the second half of the album feels like a trip back down the mountain depicted on the cover. The ambition of ‘… Like A Dog’ is the major wow factor here, and while some of the slower tracks are somewhat same-y, this is a debut album of some promise.

For The Brag