Holy Sons (Grails, Om) Shares His Single “Edge of the Bay” – New Album Coming Soon

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Holy Sons – the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Emil Amos (Grails, Om, Lilacs & Champagne) – has shared the new single “Edge of the Bay.” The track is taken from his upcoming album, Puritan Themes, due out on October 31st, via Thrill Jockey Records. Check it out below and read more.

Photo credit: Tim Bugbee

Pre-order Puritan Themes here
https://thrilljockey.com/products/puritan-themes

Amos elaborates:
““Edge of the Bay” is the most overt nod to late 70’s yacht rock production on Puritan Themes. But underneath the lulling atmosphere, there’s a sense of hovering dread. Like any classic B horror-movie foreshadowing, there’s something very bad coming, as tipped off by lyrics like “there’s bright police lights in my eyes, distant screams and muffled cries.””

Puritan Themes is Amos’ 17th album under the Holy Sons moniker, his 4th for Thrill Jockey, and a tentpole album in his wide-ranging output. Puritan Themes steps out of time and reaches back to 70’s sounds in order to escape the machinations of the current world. The compositions return to a more innocent ground floor when listeners had the time to sit with an entire album and let the lyrics sink in.

Everything is recorded, performed and mixed by Amos. Amos has been a beacon in the world of home-production for decades now, a progenitor and godfather of modern bedroom-pop and one-man-orchestras, making dense, organic sounding arrangements primarily on his own. His free-wheeling, adventurous spirit as a producer mirrors his cerebral and sprawling landmark podcast “Drifter’s Sympathy,” which feels inexorably tied to his practice of home recording. The album features Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M Ward) playing and arranging the horns on “Chain Gang”. In addition to playing guitar and drums which Amos is most known for playing live, Puritan Themes features all the staple instruments of Holy Sons: mellotron, lap steel, various drum machines and the Akai MPC sampler. Notable is Amos’ obsessive and unusual approach to mixing, repeatedly bouncing down instruments and applying pitch-bending or re-rooming plug-ins that obscure the original sound sources.