Perhaps the biggest challenge for any musician is to learn to grow as an artist and expand one's repertoire while retaining a coherent overarching vision to one's work. Since their inception and across the span of three full-length albums, Blackwater Holylight have consistently conjured an aura of both power and vulnerability, as if the members of the band have found both the space and the vehicle for lowering their emotional defenses by fortifying their position with pure sonic strength.
Yet that persistently haunting and enchanting quality has manifested in a variety of approaches. Equally adept at devil's note doom riffs, narcotic neo-folk melodies, lysergic psychedelic forays, and jagged art-rock abrasion, Blackwater Holylight have used their limited arsenal of guitar, bass, drums, synth, and voice to cover a broad swath of aural terrain.
On their newest EP, If You Only Knew, Blackwater Holylight continue to follow a path marked only as further, mining new tactics and timbres across four songs while continuing to address the uncertainties that come with transference and transition.
The EP closes with an absorbing cover of Radiohead's "All I Need," taking the original's almost claustrophobic closeness and opening it up into a grandiose swirl of undulating drones and desperation. Ultimately, If You Only Knew is a brave step into the unknown that mirrors the uncertainty of the band member's personal lives.
Where Blackwater Holylight could've easily continued to tread on familiar ground, they've opted to make bold and brave steps, all while retaining the evocative power that put them on the map.
TRACKS
1. WANDERING LOST
2. TORN RECKLESS
3. FATE IS FORWARD
4. ALL I NEED
