If You Only Knew

Perhaps the biggest challenge for any musician is to learn to grow as an artist and expand one’s repertoire while retaining a coherent overarching vision to one’s work. Since their inception and across the span of three full-length albums, Blackwater Holylight have consistently conjured an aura of both power and vulnerability, as if the members of the band have found both the space and the vehicle for lowering their emotional defenses by fortifying their position with pure sonic strength. Yet that persistently haunting and enchanting quality has manifested in a variety of approaches. Equally adept at devil’s note doom riffs, narcotic neo-folk melodies, lysergic psychedelic forays, and jagged art-rock abrasion, Blackwater Holylight have used their limited arsenal of guitar, bass, drums, synth, and voice to cover a broad swath of aural terrain. On their newest EP, If You Only Knew, Blackwater Holylight continue to follow a path marked only as further, mining new tactics and timbres across four songs while continuing to address the uncertainties that come with transference and transition.

If You Only Knew opens with “Wandering Lost,” a track singer/guitarist/bassist Sunny Faris describes as being about “feeling community in sorrow and remembering that everyone hurts, everyone changes, and that no one knows what’s next.” Fueled by the interwoven melodies of Sarah McKenna’s mournful electric piano and Sunny’s lilting vocals, then driven into high gear with Mikayla Mayhew’s amplifier-worshipping guitars and Eliese Dorsay’s earth-shaking drums in the chorus, the song thrives on the contrast between sublime beauty and seismic menace, underscoring the song’s dichotomous theme of acknowledging pain and harnessing the power of shared experience in life’s trials and tribulations.

From there, the EP segues into “Torn Reckless,” a song that combines the wall-of-sound distortion of shoegaze with dream-pop vocals and prog-rock synth flourishes. Once again, the song’s lyrical themes center around vulnerability, with Faris describing the song as being about a private relationship quandary veiled in the broader universal experience of “standing in the doorway of something that feels so hugely mysterious and bigger than you… and I think we've all been there in that doorway, and I think we've all felt the doubt.”

Side B finds Blackwater Holylight continuing to explore new opportunities. While Side A was recorded and produced by Sonny DiPerri, the flipside was captured in the studio by Dave Schiffman. “Fate Is Forward” is a song about stasis and realizing that some things are fixed in place and the only way to move beyond an obstacle is to stop leaning on it. Much like the other songs on If You Only Knew, the lyrics are rooted in specific incidents in the lives of the band members but eschew diaristic impulses in favor of highlighting the communal similarities in the spectrum of personal struggles. Never content to rest on their laurels, the band tackles the loud-quiet-loud dynamics and roaring power-chord choruses of early ‘90s alt-rock while maintaining their signature ability to render mesmeric vocal melodies out of a foundation of ominous and oppositional instrumentation. The EP closes with an absorbing cover of Radiohead’s “All I Need,” taking the original’s almost claustrophobic closeness and opening it up into a grandiose swirl of undulating drones and desperation.

Ultimately, If You Only Knew is a brave step into the unknown that mirrors the uncertainty of the band member’s personal lives. Where Blackwater Holylight could’ve easily continued to tread on familiar ground, they’ve opted to make bold and brave steps, all while retaining the evocative power that put them on the map.