From Robyn To Springsteen: Holy Holy On The Songs That Helped Shape Their New Album

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat

I love Robyn. I feel like she walks that line of making massive pop bangers that make you feel something. Her songs feel real and authentic. This tune has a similar sonic palette to what we used on this album. Electronic beats, spacey synth pads, bubbling arpeggios, groovy basslines, intimate emotive vocals and lush strings. She also likes a good long build, which we get into. Her songs often don’t stick to the standard structure of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-double chorus type thing. I like that freedom.

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

The song Stand Where I’m Standing on our new album we always felt had something of the 'Springsteens' about it. Not sure exactly what it is. The chords? The tempo and feel? The sentiment in the vocal? It has that yearning in it. I love Bruce Springsteen. Hearing his voice is a tonic that reaches inside you and lyrically he’s always telling stories in a way that strives for the best in humanity.

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Jonny Greenwood - There Will Be Blood

This album is loaded with strings. We worked with an arranger in Brisbane by the name of Toby Alexander. While the pandemic raged and abated and raged again we were working on demos and when we thought they were coming together we’d send them to Toby and he’d create these string arrangements from the demos. We’d then weave into the final tracks, taking the bits we thought worked best. This score for the film There Will Be Blood by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was one of the references we gave Toby to work off and he did a wonderful job. I find strings so deeply moving.

James Blake - Retrograde

This song is perfect. I love it so much. The layers, the choice of instrumentation. The vocal delivery and melody. It’s divine. Such artful composing and production. I feel like there are elements of this that inspire us. The combination of acoustic piano, drum machine and synths as well as the layers of verbed out vocals and some long wild howls is something we do on our new record. A song like Here & Now owes something to James Blake.

tUnE-yArDs - Water Fountain

A song like So Tired on our new record reminds me of Tune-Yards. The percussive clapping, the use of affected vocal loops to build the melodic backbone of the song. We often like to build songs out of little vocal loops - cut up and processed and layered till they almost sound like samples.

Rüfüs Du Sol - Innerbloom

On this album, we wanted to sometimes inhabit some of the soundscapes that you’d find in a Rüfüs song. Deep four-to-the-floor kick drums pulsing away under clicky percussive beats, with low rubbery synth bass parts. The vocals are clear and close but also at times heavily affected. It’s a heady combination that’s fun to work with.

LCD Soundsystem - Oh Baby

A song like Believe Anything had a bit of an LCD vibe to it. The vocal treatment. The combination of synths and that beautiful menacing bass. Again it’s music that makes you feel something.