On the four albums leading up to 2020's
Interloper, the Texas quartet
Holy Wave quietly established themselves as reliable practitioners of top-notch psychedelic sounds. The band fill their psychedelic beakers with typical ingredients like echoing guitars, spacey melodies, and hazy atmospheres, while also adding potent strains of washed-out shoegaze textures, hypnotic motorik rhythms, and reverb-heavy garage rock. On their previous album,
Adult Fear, the group added more vintage keys to the mix and that's a trend that they expand on here. Almost every track has a Vox organ or mini-Moog lurking in the background, and sometimes there are sweeping synths or clanky drum machines working away, too. The album opener, "Schmetterling," has enough trilling sequencers, thick organs, and burbling synths to give
Stereolab a run for their money, and the rest of the album benefits greatly from the subtle tricky placement of the keys in the arrangements. It's all a part of the more considered sonic approach
Holy Wave undertook while recording the album. Not only have they added more keys, each song sounds like it was created in a laboratory setting. Any rough edges have been smoothed off, leaving the songs sounding soft, supple, and almost peaceful at times. Gently swaying tracks like "R&B" and "Maybe Then I Can Cry" are easy to cuddle up as the guitars jangle and twang, the rhythm section sways, and the vocals croon soothingly, and the trippy epic ballad "Escapism" has a stately and majestic feel that even a half-ton of reverb can't bury.