Buzzin Music

Holiday for Strings released their new album, Favorite Flavor, on Sea You Records on 20 April 2010

Holiday for Strings

Take three former professional chefs, add a dash of John, from Peter, Bjorn and John, season with Pony from Thieves Like Us and what have you got? Holiday for Strings…and on the first few listens to their second long player, Favorite Flavor, it’s a dish best served under hazy moonbeams, where the horizon splits the mind and every shooting star is a potential starter for ten.

Opening track Favorite Flavor, rises like a Software Slumped soufflé; concave and hinting at complex ingredients. The chord changes have the aroma of a Grandaddy epic but the dub-heavy arrangement and dissonant tones are more like Kid A on a lysergic, midnight run from the maitre de.

As the album unfolds it becomes clear that the ingredients are actually rather simple and the album’s two cover versions are a clear indication of the band’s underlying influences. Seconds up is a take on Calling Out of Context, by American composer and disco artist Arthur Russell.

And Favorite Flavor closes with an arrangement of I Cry/Night After Night, by The Egyptian Lover, a leading figure in the LA dance and rap scene almost thirty years ago. Synthesised disco beats and wisps of dancefloor electronica are never far from the surface. However, it’s how Holiday for Strings use these textures as a base that makes Favorite Flavor a beguiling and often enchanting proposition.

Like New Order, who famously spent many months in the early 80s getting high on the scent of New York’s club scene, Holiday for Strings have the ability to synthesise floor-filling, hedonistic tastes with the subtle nuances of a psychedelic, post-punk dish.

The low-slung riffing on Two of You is rises like a phoenix from the ashes of Joy Division, while Particles is the disco-beat extension to Pink Floyd’s Breathe, which builds into a measured, arpeggiated cacophony.

Depending on your usual a la carte choices, Favorite Flavor is not an instantly accessible album. The space cadet reverb that chimes throughout and sparse arrangements may leave the palate dry. But it’s well worth persevering with, as one-by-one the sonic taste receptors are switched on and a mouth-watering space odyssey ensues.

Holiday for Strings have a few European dates lined up in May, find out more…

Visit Holiday for Strings’ website

Watch Holiday for Strings perform Two of You live