Review Summary: Burial at the foot of a tree
There’s almost a fierceness in the way that Holy Fawn express the relinquishing of control to the wilderness. Holy Fawn’s conception of nature, both violent and nurturing, focuses on sensory notes: the chill of cold winds or dense fog, found in the guitars’ icy reverberation; a more abstract wrath embedded in the walls of feedback, which usually avoid a complete overpowering of the instruments.
Realms, in all its harsher shoegaze leanings, can be disarmingly gentle - “Amulet” is illuminated with soft washes of synthesizer and a simple, chiming guitar line. But Holy Fawn have a tendency to make abrupt transitions - feedback interjecting on “Foal”, then interrupted by the near-silence of a lone guitar, then quickly forcing its way back in. “Bury me, I want to feel the soil smothering,” they sing languorously on “Glóandi”; the ground, normally conceived of as a passive device, becomes life-giving (and life-taking) soil. Personification, or even the giving of agency, abounds - Holy Fawn tell us of a sun who dies, a moon who watches, the waters of the creek that never behave. It dwarfs you as an individual human.
The abandonment that
Realms presents is equal parts mellow, dreamlike, and relentlessly masochistic. A song settles comfortably into the lull of patient strumming and slow, deliberate picking; the diaphanous vocals, drenched in echoes, are so fragile that they must be layered to remain on the conscious plane; and all the while, Holy Fawn sing about wanting to be cut open, to be bled out in a forest. It’s a personal blood sacrifice, a twisted appeal to the sanctity of nature that relishes in its irrationality. Vicious feedback, hovering right behind looping melodies, attacks from outside the reverie, as if to confirm that storm-clouds loom over with inevitable lightning. Beyond the hypnotic motifs lies further restlessness and irregularity: lyrics associated with the verse of “Can We Lie Here?” cut into the chorus; the drumming is animated with quiet flourishes and triplets. Therein lies the insidiously effective method of seduction by
Realms: a slow pulling into a world where the lyrical surprise, nearly dormant in the swirls of sound, is to be sought out.
In comparing
Realms with a later work, the single “Arrows”, I can see that the seeds Holy Fawn planted did eventually germinate. The vocals of
Realms, which rely heavily on the production to obscure weakness in falsetto passages, become more of an afterthought in “Arrows”; they smartly give way to spiralling resonance, and let themselves be lost in the cacophony that results from the song’s utter collapse. The transitions (or rather, lack thereof) have grown bolder, composure being shattered ever more violently than before. What’s also curious is the shift of perspective:
Realms centres on the willing victim, “Arrows” on a vengeful force that devastates during the song’s storm of static. The knowledge that Holy Fawn’s music can become further unhinged shines light on
Realms - it will stop at nothing to return to the place that pains it. But there’s something exquisite about being overwhelmed by what we cannot control, being at the mercy of that which embodies life and can so easily take it away. It’s a certain freedom.
