Holy Sons is about facing your personal reality

Are we all not musical descendants of the Beatles? Or, have too many spins of Abbey Road left an indelible impression on one’s ability to hear music in any other way? There’s a distinctive Fab Four footprint on the Holy Sons, that is, if you could sub Kurt Cobain for all of Paul’s parts. Which would give the old Beatles catalogue the languid and slippery feel that comes from musical conflicts left unsolved. Nirvana were masters at that. The Beatles on the other hand tied up everything in neat little George-and-Ira-Gershwin packages. The Holy Sons walk a thin line between the two.

The guy behind the band is Emil Amos. He lives in Portland, claims to have written over 1000 songs, plays a multitude of musical instruments, and favors the lo-fi in both his live and his recorded sound. He looks like the sort of person you’d buy a home insurance policy from, clean-cut and stable and well-mannered, not someone who guzzled LSD every day during his formative years, which he mentions frequently during interviews.

Born in Florida, Amos, 40, has also been making records for 16 years, although a lot of his early stuff was self-released. His day job has been playing drums in other people’s bands. If you’re a fan of either Grails or Om, you’ve seen him behind the kit. The Sons were his coming-out party: he once told a reviewer that “Holy Sons is about facing your personal reality.” He claims the reason he’s not toured much is due to the aforementioned drug use, but even so, there’s a kind of a loyal and growing underground movement that has caught a random Sons gig here or there and liked what they heard. Holy Sons is a new day for Amos. He’s out of the dope basement, clean and sober, and the music he’s making is both strange and familiar in equal measures.

Nurses also performs.