D.W. Holiday
Technical Difficulties, Under The Influence (CD)
 Pills, pills and more pills. Green and beige capsules, prescribed by D.W. Holiday for reducing (or inducing) various afflictions such as pain, money, religion, war, fame and sex. This is what's plastered all over the cover of Technical Difficulties, Under The Influences.
And perhaps this medicinal hodgepodge is an apt analogy of the contents within. There is no one miracle cure for life's ailments (if there were, I sure wouldn't be sitting here), no uber-pill you can take to fix everything up at once. You can only try and fix certain things and take your chances with the rest. So the best approach is perhaps a distributed attack. This is what I feel the band is attempting, at least in their approach to their songs.
Certainly, I had no idea that was the case, for the slow-as-Spain (the band) opening track "No Diving" sort of led me falsely to believe that the extent of the album might lie solely in that direction. The song is subtle, with hints of the Beatles' "She's So Heavy" and Sparklehorse. And then came along the curveball that is "Cowpoke", and while I'm not exactly enamored yet of some of the drawled lyrics ("I know what you are / You're my little country fried girl"), this departure from the sound of the earlier song was pleasantly jolting, if there is such a feeling. Boozily and quite unabashedly country-rockish in feel, this set the tone for "Winter" which gusts in one part East River Pipe, two parts Mercury Rev, and three parts Folk Implosion.
"TDVTI" contains cold antique pianos and whispered vocals like ghostly telephoned crank calls in the night. "Push Play" continues that feel but introduces strange keyboard noises and beats. I think I need to return again to the earlier Sparklehorse comparison here. That sense of slightly attenuated grandeur that Linkous use to such great effect is present in D.W. Holiday's work, as is the juxtaposition of the angelic with the devilishly disconcerting. Little quirky touches, like having the bass drum beat alternate from full left to right panned on "Auburn Skies", are unexpected bonuses in already amazing songs.
I could go on naming the different bands that they remind me of (Stereolab for "30 Cans", Grandaddy and Pink Floyd for "The Saddest Day") but I think you get the picture. If musical changeups were dollars, this would be a very rich band indeed. I've listened to the album perhaps 6 times and still feel pleasantly surprised at the transition of each song into the next. Not that the thematic linkage between tracks is missing. There is an innate and disconnected sadness that runs throughout all their songs. That much is easy to pick up on. But it may be up to you to connect the rest of the dots.
- review by BY (7.18.04)
Three Ring Records
805 Hayes, Apt. E
San Francisco, CA 94117
threeringrecords@yahoo.com
www.dwholiday.com
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