Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/09/08
Label: Mercury

Fittingly for a man who's made his name with soundtracks and filmic solo ventures, David Holmes' career follows a distinct narrative curve. He started as an accomplished turntablist, piecing together beats and sampled vocals to form his atmospheric, noir-ish slices of cool. Then over the years he moved on to creating his own source material, be it collecting New York street recordings, or working with Bobby Gillespie and Martina Topley-Bird. When he finally formed a band, The Free Association, it seemed like a natural conclusion to his story arc.

Problem was, The Free Association weren't great. They seemed flabby and rudderless compared to his sharp, crisp work for the silver screen, making you wonder if he was saving his best stuff for those lucrative soundtracks. Five years and four film scores later, we arrive at another milestone in that narrative. For the first time in his career, Holmes handles lead vocals on this album, prompted, he says, by the intensely personal nature of the lyrics. But the same questions remain - is this really his best work, or has Holmes become his own side-project?

Ironically, considering his background, "The Holy Pictures" is a jerkily sequenced, uneven album. The last four tracks are instrumental (the only vocals are sighing "ahhhs"), and seem to exist in their own little annex, taking the mood that had been conjured by the preceding six and crystalising it. They're psychedelic affairs, played by a full band, that make you think
of oil light shows, '60s happenings and prism effects on super 8. There's hints of Stereolab and the electronica that Primal Scream dabbled with briefly on "Evil Heat" but really there's one clear reference point - Caribou.

This is, to all intents and purposes, a Caribou tribute album. There's the same blissed-out devotion to the clichés of psychedelia, the same woozy, soft focus vocals (which don't appear to be personal whatsoever), the same driving percussion and the same nods to everyone from early "Drop"-era Shamen to Jesus & Mary Chain. Which is all well and good, but isn't David Holmes meant to be a little more forward-thinking than this? Or will we find his truly groundbreaking work on his next soundtrack?

A fun album, then. The sound of a busy professional having some time off with his mates and knocking out some psych pop in the basement. But it's also a 2007 record from a man who should have been handing us the sound of 2010.

    by Ian Watson