TYBS#5 (DEC2006)
I corresponded on-line with Canadian indie trio Johnny Hollow back in 2004. They were nice enough to send their CD all the way across the Pacific and, in return, I sent them some albums by local goth bands.
Has Black Sabbath or Motorhead ever saved your soul? If you’ve ever sat up late at night, rocking your grief out with just your stereo, Johnny Hollow will remind you why music can, and does, save lives.
I think they’re the shape of things to come for dark music. This piece of TYBS will probably seem too musically obscurantist, but this is the point: JH don’t deserve to be so secret.
Johnny Hollow are Janine White (keyboards, guitars and vocals), Kitty Thompson (cello), and Vincent Marcone (vocals and digital work). Johnny Hollow is both the band’s name and a persona that lives only in their music. The project all started in 2001, when Marcone, White and Thompson were drinking buddies in the university town of Waterloo.
White and Thompson were unsatisfied with the kind of music they were playing in other bands. When they linked up with Marcone and jammed for the first time, there were “whisperings of a voice that was not to be silenced.”
So the trio premiered their first experiments as an audio feature in the ”Sonic Skeleton” section of Marcone’s site for his digital artwork. Audience response was extremely encouraging, giving them a significant fan base nearly overnight. In March of 2003 they launched a teaser site to promote their indie debut. And enthusiasts from all over the world have since flocked to this site, including yours truly.
I wholeheartedly refer you to www.johhnyhollow.com and http://www.mypetsekeleton.com/ to discover their on-line presence that’s as strong as an earthbound soul. Also, as if the endorsement on this column isn’t enough, I strongly urge you to try and get the CD.
The trio is warm and truly generous. I mean, you wouldn’t even be reading this if they weren’t kind enough to send their work all the way across the Pacific.
Though the CD cover gives you an idea of what Johnny the character looks like, I personally imagine him as a cross between Red Dragon’s Tooth Fairy serial killer and a chattering, mad hatter Baron Samedi of the voodoo pantheon.
Both ominous and elegant he is a menacing figure by his very passitivity. He’s content to wait, like the man at the crossroads. All things come to him, eventually, after all. There’s no need for haste. He seldom moves but when he does we see him blurred, never quite in focus even as he peers into our eyes, nose to nose. His gestures are too fast for us even as, to him, it’s quite leisurely.
If you listen closely you can hear his voice: a fused whisper of several other voices, layered and intermingling. The adventures and spirit of Johnny provides a sort of discontinuous narrative backdrop as the songs on the album unfold.
Johnny Hollow the album is relentlessly impressionistic. They use instruments like keyboards, electric and acoustic guitars, ethereal and aria-soaring vocals, plus a cello linked to effects -- or a series thereof – that the poor instrument was never meant to be put through. Though it is this whole beating-sound-into-submission idea that cellist Kitty Thompson was going for in the first place. The things you can do on a cello with pedals, she says, “Far outstretches the imagination.”
Even the fillers like the updated, traditional ballad “Motherless Child” and a few instrumentals are full courses in themselves. But the real meat is tracks like the anthemic, wounded “Dark Thing,” and the scathing apologia that’s also a razor observation of our theatrically absurd society in “Bag of Snow.”
On this last one White sings so scornfully, “I’m sorry if I’m low and dirty and mean and cold / God told me to, it’s all for you / For what it’s worth, this is my bag of snow,” that you want to cackle along to the derision like some prime evil before shooting your dealer.
There’s also the full on, danceable saturation of “Stolen.” On this last one it took me three listens to finally realize, with much head shaking shock, that the unearthly distorted riff which the song is built around is played by a cello and not a guitar.
Johnny Hollow’s musical compass is firmly set to a terra incognita we can only glimpse at, but one which our psyche never fails to recognize for it contains recognizable angels and devils playing out our millennia old conflicts. Visually, sonically and digitally, their indie LP is one of those intimate, profoundly intense records whose gestalt will remind you why you fell in love with the dark in the first place, and will make you fall all over again.
More from JH on the next TYBS.
I corresponded on-line with Canadian indie trio Johnny Hollow back in 2004. They were nice enough to send their CD all the way across the Pacific and, in return, I sent them some albums by local goth bands.
Has Black Sabbath or Motorhead ever saved your soul? If you’ve ever sat up late at night, rocking your grief out with just your stereo, Johnny Hollow will remind you why music can, and does, save lives.
I think they’re the shape of things to come for dark music. This piece of TYBS will probably seem too musically obscurantist, but this is the point: JH don’t deserve to be so secret.
Johnny Hollow are Janine White (keyboards, guitars and vocals), Kitty Thompson (cello), and Vincent Marcone (vocals and digital work). Johnny Hollow is both the band’s name and a persona that lives only in their music. The project all started in 2001, when Marcone, White and Thompson were drinking buddies in the university town of Waterloo.
White and Thompson were unsatisfied with the kind of music they were playing in other bands. When they linked up with Marcone and jammed for the first time, there were “whisperings of a voice that was not to be silenced.”
So the trio premiered their first experiments as an audio feature in the ”Sonic Skeleton” section of Marcone’s site for his digital artwork. Audience response was extremely encouraging, giving them a significant fan base nearly overnight. In March of 2003 they launched a teaser site to promote their indie debut. And enthusiasts from all over the world have since flocked to this site, including yours truly.
I wholeheartedly refer you to www.johhnyhollow.com and http://www.mypetsekeleton.com/ to discover their on-line presence that’s as strong as an earthbound soul. Also, as if the endorsement on this column isn’t enough, I strongly urge you to try and get the CD.
The trio is warm and truly generous. I mean, you wouldn’t even be reading this if they weren’t kind enough to send their work all the way across the Pacific.
Though the CD cover gives you an idea of what Johnny the character looks like, I personally imagine him as a cross between Red Dragon’s Tooth Fairy serial killer and a chattering, mad hatter Baron Samedi of the voodoo pantheon.
Both ominous and elegant he is a menacing figure by his very passitivity. He’s content to wait, like the man at the crossroads. All things come to him, eventually, after all. There’s no need for haste. He seldom moves but when he does we see him blurred, never quite in focus even as he peers into our eyes, nose to nose. His gestures are too fast for us even as, to him, it’s quite leisurely.
If you listen closely you can hear his voice: a fused whisper of several other voices, layered and intermingling. The adventures and spirit of Johnny provides a sort of discontinuous narrative backdrop as the songs on the album unfold.
Johnny Hollow the album is relentlessly impressionistic. They use instruments like keyboards, electric and acoustic guitars, ethereal and aria-soaring vocals, plus a cello linked to effects -- or a series thereof – that the poor instrument was never meant to be put through. Though it is this whole beating-sound-into-submission idea that cellist Kitty Thompson was going for in the first place. The things you can do on a cello with pedals, she says, “Far outstretches the imagination.”
Even the fillers like the updated, traditional ballad “Motherless Child” and a few instrumentals are full courses in themselves. But the real meat is tracks like the anthemic, wounded “Dark Thing,” and the scathing apologia that’s also a razor observation of our theatrically absurd society in “Bag of Snow.”
On this last one White sings so scornfully, “I’m sorry if I’m low and dirty and mean and cold / God told me to, it’s all for you / For what it’s worth, this is my bag of snow,” that you want to cackle along to the derision like some prime evil before shooting your dealer.
There’s also the full on, danceable saturation of “Stolen.” On this last one it took me three listens to finally realize, with much head shaking shock, that the unearthly distorted riff which the song is built around is played by a cello and not a guitar.
Johnny Hollow’s musical compass is firmly set to a terra incognita we can only glimpse at, but one which our psyche never fails to recognize for it contains recognizable angels and devils playing out our millennia old conflicts. Visually, sonically and digitally, their indie LP is one of those intimate, profoundly intense records whose gestalt will remind you why you fell in love with the dark in the first place, and will make you fall all over again.
More from JH on the next TYBS.
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