Holy Wave: Freaks of Nurture

Holy Wave’s third full-length, Freaks of Nature opens with a little nod to the Beatles, but the rest of the album spends much of the time tracing a route between old England and the US West Coast. It’s a trippy album, not just in its travels, but also in its psych influences. While the band still drops its anchor in reverb-covered territory, the pleasure here comes from the hooks. Stripped down, these ten tracks are pleasing pop nuggets, though sometimes stretched out past the five-minute mark. The Zombies influence remains, but tracks like “Western Playground” touch on a Dunedin sound. With this release, Holy Wave doesn’t break new ground for itself, but it continues to refine what it does well, and its merging of general psych influences (we could even throw in Paisley Underground effects, as in “You Should Lie”) leads to music that’s specifically its own.