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LP
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THRILL 641X-LP
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Purple color vinyl. "Holy Sons is the largely solo project of Emil Amos (Grails, Om, Lilacs & Champagne). Puritan Themes is his 17th album and his 4th for Thrill Jockey Records and a tentpole album in his wide-ranging output, including myriad private press LPs, collections of oddities, and conceptual series. Puritan Themes relaxed vibes are influenced by the laid-back west coast rock sound of mid-period Fleetwood Mac, blended with a dose of psych distortion and imbued with the breeziness and ease of yacht rock. Puritan Themes is a record that knowingly, barely fits into the modern world. When mixing the record in Chicago, everyday Amos skated through Douglass Park listening to podcasts about the inner workings of The Band, listened to '70s AM radio while washing dishes and went to sleep at night to early Bee Gees interviews. The earliest concept of the record was based around the track 'Chain Gang' which was an imaginary take on if Cat Stevens had smoked a ton of salvia and taken a much darker route within that world of dense, story-telling/message-based songwriting. The track 'Raw & Disfigured' borrows its name from the last Thrill Jockey Holy Sons record, in a referential move that's stolen from the way Led Zeppelin separated the track 'Houses of the Holy' from the record of the same name (once again harkening back to '70s lore)."
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CD
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THR 373CD
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"Holy Sons is Emil Amos, a musician whose chameleonic tendencies and technical versatility has lead to him becoming an in demand multi-instrumentalist as a founding member of Grails and Lilacs & Champagne, as well as a member of Om and a hired gun for Jandek, to name a few. Holy Sons is at the center of his many musical personalities and is his longest standing project, acting as an outlet for some of his most personal and direct songs. In Holy Sons, Amos puts his restless imagination to work using a variety of inventive home recording methods to turn melodic slow-burners into multi-layered, atmospheric missives. While his methods and prolificacy provide a kinship with Sebadoh, Ariel Pink and other musicians who have offered countless transmissions from their bedroom floor, Holy Sons comes from the mind of someone who has internalized the minutia of 70s rock music and eschews the stereotypical lo-fi sound for a much deeper and more varied palate. The Fact Facer, his Thrill Jockey debut, bathes Amos' thoughtful, and even at times philosophical, songs in technicolor darkness, and reinforces Holy Sons as his musical centerpiece. "
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CD
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IMPREC 372CD
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"My Only Warm Coals neatly sums up a fifteen year span of Emil Amos' basement home-recording in nineteen songs. Using the four-track like a mirror in LSD therapy sessions, Amos disassembles himself and leaves the puddle on the floor for the listener to contemplate without easy resolution. The record also arcs a period of 'lo-fi' recording technique and sonic experimentation that has largely gone undocumented in the larger underground culture, while epitomizing a supremely alienated sound from a person who wouldn't set foot on a stage for most of these fifteen years."
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CD
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IMPREC 264CD
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"With Holy Sons' newest full-length Criminal's Return, Emil Amos dabbles in the 'revenge fantasy' genre, going toe to toe with Roger Waters in the race to become the most bitter songwriter in the world. If Spacemen 3 coined 'the sound of confusion,' Holy Sons can stake claim to 'the sound of disappointment.' Criminal's Return was recorded in various studios over the last two years but also contains three studio songs from 2005 that feature the last violin recording contributions of Timothy Horner (Grails) who's since been M.I.A."
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CD
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IMPREC 225CD
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"Brand new full length from Grails/Om member Emil Amos. While burying himself in old books on Cold War espionage and '70s Italian horror soundtracks, Emil Amos logged many hours into the night layering endless tracks of improv and then editing them into a cohesive sonic blanket over 2 years time. He emerged with his sixth full length record under the name Holy Sons called Drifter's Sympathy. Listeners will recognize Amos' signature hallucinatory/LSD-inspired mixing-style, heard on records like Black Tar Prophecies, Doomsdayer's Holiday and Take Refuge, by his other group Grails. Drifter's Sympathy draws from the instrumental moods of Grails and melds perfectly with his usually vocal-based solo-project creating a densely paranoid atmosphere that evenly balances sonic experimentation with refined folk/blues song forms. The main cornerstone of influence for Drifter's Sympathy are the German experimental four-track journeymen like Gunter Schikert, Eroc and Achim Reichel whose records reflected a sonic appetite that challenged the limits of the expressiveness of each instrument and tried anything in the mixing process to create a sound-world as labyrinthine and complex as the human mind itself. Rather than making music based only on skill, melodicism, soulfulness or technique, Drifter's Sympathy seems to argue that the most vital quality in music is pure imagination."
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