Blackwater Holylight – Wandering Lost

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 forthcoming 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.

#blackwaterholylight