The Holy Innocents

Now back to the bread and butter of this blog. The Holy Innocents are the first northern band I have featured (this is an all-Ireland blog after all) but you couldn't tell that from the lovely vocals! The band consists of two lads; "Eamonn McNamee (vocals, guitar, chest out, impatient) and Mark McCambridge (guitar, vocals, measured, brooding)". I'm directly quoting from their very nice looking website there. I can't confirm or deny that one is impatient and one is brooding. For a band of just two members, the sound is voluminous, rounded and maybe more moody than broody! The band have been doing well recently since their track Freshly Fallen Snow has been used in Kia ads. You'll recognise it as soon as you here it. It feels strange hearing the song without the voice-over.

Now at this point, some might start pontificating that by licensing their song for a car commercial, they have been tempted by monetary reimbursements. I remember watching that music show that used to be on Tv3 in the early noughties where they spent the whole programme complaining about Moby who licensed the entire Play album for commercial use. I would argue that we have moved a long way from then. Bands have to make tracks free now to get exposure. People download albums for free from Bandcamp without thinking about studio costs to record (or even if albums are recorded at home; the time involved). Bands deserve and should get compensated for this work. So I would applaud any band that is getting exposure like this at the moment when even commercial radio tends to ignore music like this. /rant.

Anyway back to the music, I feel better now. The Holy Innocent's sound could be described as indie americana. Tracks like "Red Wind" and "I'm behind you" seep of sparseness and sadness and even a bit of menacing! Then you have a track like "The Wolf In Me" where you think you know where it is going and suddenly it takes off Arcade Fire-esque into a foot tapin', head-bobbing dirge. It’s nice to hear two vocals as well singing together. It really adds depth to the songs.

You can check their site for updates and don's forget the Facebook.