Bodish, Holt

***"Holt Bodish, best known as the driving force behind Montana’s power trio Mordecai, steps into a more intimate and unfiltered space on Gorgeous, a collection of refreshingly shambolic home recordings that offers a deeper glimpse into his singular artistic sensibility. Crisp, wiry guitars cut through layers of cacophonous percussion, keyboards, drum machines, and anything else Holt has at his disposal. Like the detailed twang of certain UK DIY bands, the songs are propelled by experimentation. Layers of home-recorded first takes blend together in an analog haze, and beneath the noise, Holt’s unmistakably sharp riffs and churning chord progressions come into focus. Songs such as I Am Nothing recall the pop songcraft of Tall Dwarfs or The Clean, but here they are imbued with a looser, more chaotic energy, while Half Sunset leans into an effortless VU cool. Holt’s story-like, half-spoken vocals are less breezy than Lou Reed’s, instead sounding stark and intimate, like The Shadow Ring fronting a rock band. Hand percussion lends an earthy pulse to tracks like Bogus Refutations and No to Nothing, edging toward the folky mysticism of The Fugs or The Incredible String Band at their most hypnotic and exploratory. Rather than feeling deconstructed, these songs feel unconstructed, as if the ideas were captured the moment they formed, still warm with immediacy. Gorgeous draws its power from this approach, where the result is a disorienting and compelling sense of realness."—Kryssi B.