TLOBF Loves… Holy Fuck

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*Sweeping statement alert*

The best thing that I listened to in the whole of 2007 was Holy Fuck’s self titled second album. Having reviewed it for this fine website, and given it 90% (if anything, a conservative score), I’ve since keenly acquired their first release (LP) and am yet to fall out of love with the Canadian pranksters.

Their stock-in-trade is a kind of glorious electro cacophony made up of equal parts exhilaration and giddy unease. For the former, listen to ‘Lovely Allen’. I defy anyone with a soul not to feel it soar during the amazing crescendo ¾ of the way through. The unease is accentuated by the sort of strangled wordless vocalisations that are the closest that the band come to “singing”, on many tracks (see ‘Korock’, ‘Choppers’, ‘Echo Sam’).

In this age of in-your-face celebrity there is also a pleasing, intriguing sense of mystery about them. The lyric-less songs, the bizarre titles, the strange noises and yelps all give the listener scope to build up their own images and ideas as to what the band are singing about, rather than being taken by the hand and (to mix my metaphors as a tribute to Fuck-style mash-ups) spoonfed meaning.

Somewhere between rave, post-rock, electro and prog, Holy Fuck’s repetitive beats a-gogo and exuberant experimentation certainly made 2007 a special musical year for me. I can’t wait to see what they are going to come up with for 2008.

mp3:> Holy Fuck: ‘Lovely Allen’