Come Holy Spirit

 

picture by Kenny McNabb

 

 Ok I'm going to write about something a bit different today, a band I discovered recently and have been listening to a lot lately, which means I find their music more than enjoyable, I find it almost fascinating.

Come Holy Spirit has nothing to do with your local religious choirs, being a trio for a start and being also quite far from the religious crowd as you can imagine.

Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the band manages to bring up the very classic set up of drums, guitar and bass for a not classic at all result.

Here we got Sam (Centipede Eest, Gangwish) behind the drums, Aaron (Lungs Face Feet, Hex) playing the 6-string and Gina (Hymns for New Country, John Denver's Airplane, the super weird Beware The Blunted Needle, she also performs solo under different names like Evil Twin) on bass and vocals who is also a full-time multi-disciplinary artist on the side.

All these different bands are not all exactly my cup of tea, so what makes Come Holy Spirit so good to my punk ears ?

Before going any further let me say that I will skip some of the band's first releases and focus only on their last three. But don't hesitate to have at look at Weather, CHS's very first tape back in 2016, which is a bit too soft and "aerial" for me or Grand Island, CHS's first LP.

Come Holy Spirit is not an easy band to define, yes the trio overall delivers a quiet and relaxing kind of music (compared to the usual level of angriness and loudness featured on this page) but is also subtle enough to play with a very broad range of emotions and feelings through a purified and mastered musical construction.

 

Since their beginning CHS are compared to The Ex and Dog Faced Hermans which could be put together as the most experimental and daring bands to come out of the anarcho punk wave of the beginning of the 80's (and one of the best band at all for The Ex in my humble opinion). But not The Ex from Disturbing Domestic Peace no, I'm talking here about The Ex from Scrabbling At The Lock and later with absolutely stunning songs like Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek, Stupid Competitions or Huriyet where Katherina Bornefeld demonstrated that in addition to being an exceptional drummer, she is also an exceptional singer (and Gina is doing more than really well too!). 

 

 

Released in April 2018 on Water Wing Records from Portland, Asters And Disasters comes after enough time for the band to have digested their influences and mastered their sound.  

Yes there is a lot of The Ex in this third release (I mean: the vocals on Wandering Womb!) and G.W. Sok guest vocals on two tracks only confirm the comparison but the anarcho punk roots can also be more lively than on the recent releases of the Dutch band; Prescribed Burn or some parts of Human Animal for example take us back to the golden days of Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre on Penis Envy (which is another not-too-bad comparison!).

 

So yes CHS is a looot more than a copy cat, these guys have brought folk music into mutated anarcho punk, building a bridge between the protest tradition of a part of American folk music and the punks wearing black of Essex...

And the result is more than good, it's hypnotising and fascinating! 

 

 

  So make yourself a favour and take some time off to calmly enjoy the 6 minutes long bewitching tribal rhythm of Essayons (with some parts in French S'il vous plait), the Nick Cave-influenced Elephantine or the surprising S.O.L Song which vocals and horns evoke Patti Smith and early PJ Harvey...

 

   It's the kind of album I will always come back to, like a warm seat near a fireplace, one curls up there with the simple pleasure of comfort and regained security, and that's all we need during these cold and dark winter days...

 

 

  It's in November 2019 that landed this self-released 6-track split with Gnarrenschiff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin; a quite unusual band composed of one bass, two electric sazs (a plucked string instruments of Turkish origin) and one bodhran (a frame drum of Irish origin) which plays instrumental songs only. 

The two bands played a show together in 2016 and the outstanding Gnarrenschiff set up could only seduce our trio from Pittsburgh, a few beers and years later the split was born.

To be honest I find the Milwaukee side interesting but not really thrilling so I will not spend much time writing about it.

Let's focus on the CHS side three tracks. 

The two longest songs first appeared on Weather (the band's seminal tape) but were rerecorded, so it's not-really-new stuff here but it doesn't matter because it does sound new.

 

It starts with Panacea which got something of oriental in its guitar part, something ethereal in its carried away singing despite an overall quite tensed atmosphere made of ups and downs skillfully following one another, taking us along an eventful but pleasant ride. This is not the anarcho punk à la The Ex of Asters And Disasters but I can still feel this little "punky spikey" something underneath... 

Panacea is a 6 minute long tune and actually sounds like several songs one after another, it almost "dies" around 4:30 before coming back to life slowly to finally explode into a dry and nervous rhythm.

Cormorant Song is super short (1:43) compared to the two others but offers a nice jumpy bells interlude before taking us back to the main path with the 06 Female final ride (the longest song).

 

This final piece is an incantation, a eight minute long shamanic chant recalling the Indian invocations of the hidden ancestral gods, the powerful masters of nature. And the chant and the tension rise slowly, like a lament around a campfire in a faraway desert, before culminating in a high plateau inhabited by spirits and ancient forces, leaving us there... in the middle of a black sabbath dance... our exhausted limbs finally falling on the ground before a final outburst of our souls, possessed by invoked demons.... at last...

Ok ok I'm carried away a little bit here, sorry! But man, what a track!

CHS takes us really far with these three songs and believe me, it's a beautiful journey...

 

 

 

Mid 2020, CHS is back with eight new tracks written and recorded in 2019 and a cover artwork made by Gina herself.

Undiscovered Land (released by Water Wing records) takes it right where Asters And Disasters left it (and that's for the best)... but unfortunately the state of the world, and the USA, in particular has not gotten any better since 2018 and Gina is clearly pissed off! 

 

 

But it starts easy first with the dreamlike Easement which lays the, now famous, bases of the lively rhythm and bewitching singing of the group, introduction to an album that is much more punk than its predecessors.

 

Yes CHS are back to their anarcho punk roots with the punk Working Women Are Pissed (Believe Her), the very punk  A.W.O.L, the beautiful and very The Ex-influenced Gracias A la Vida (inspired by the Violetta Para's song) and the overwhelming First World Blues, which is clearly influenced by the best anarcho "ballads" (always edging with repressed angriness) of the golden era of the British movement and makes a bitter assessment of the first world glaring inequalities and obscene richness. 

 

 

  But once again CHS manages to be more than that and to take us by surprise very far from our musical comfort zone (from mine at least). For example the bells of Immortal Home (despite the lyrics coming from the gospel song Angel Band by William Bradbury) got a strong Gaman vibe which fits surprisingly well with Gina's voice whereas the (too?) short Sky is Falling can be considered as a deep and moving folk song.

 

And what to say about Tedious and Brief whose galloping rhythmic sections and powerful singing make it perhaps the perfect example of what this outstanding group is capable of embodying? 

 

 

Come Holy Spirit deliver another outstanding release which finds the perfect balance between their different influences, bringing back a "punker" side which can only seduce me.

As somebody wrote it somewhere, CHS defines the "post-everything" genre.

I would add that saying that the band from Pittsburgh is to anarcho punk what The Evens are to Minor Threat would probably be too much but (and I think you get the idea), it's a band which goes forward, straight to the future without rejecting the roots of the past... And that's what real good bands of their times do!

Post-anarcho-punk? post-american-folk?

Who cares?

 

CHS is CHS and I really wish it will stay this way for ever...

 

 

 

  You can listen to Come Holy Spirit on Rien à Faire #18.

 

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