Album Review: Holy Oak Is A Lyrical Anthropologist In Second Son
At times, the man that has done everything can feel like they have done nothing. At times, the man who has seen all can feel blind. And, at times, the man who feels everything can go numb. Enter Holy Oak, who has lived many lives in one, to release a new album, Second Son, that paints vivid narratives of a life, that for all its accomplishments, has hard time feeling victorious.
Singer-songwriter Neil Holyoak has been a student of anthropology, a small-time sheet metal salesman, nihilistic futurist, amateur rifleman, left-handed socialist, soft alcoholic and self-proclaimed prison warden of his own soul; the latter being his most consistent job. Living between Montreal, Hong Kong, British Columbia, and currently Los Angeles, Neil performs with a shifting band of roadshow vagabonds under the banner Holy Oak; a persona he created to let the prison warden of his mind have a musical “break” of sorts. It is always strange to see lives that fit definitions of fulfillment roll in as “half-empty”, but it is that sentiment that finds genres like, folk music. Electric guitars slowly wine and dine in the table settings/ songs of “Laughing Man”, “Dead Time”, and “Two Dollar Movie” to describe how, on the outside, your life seems to have all the ingredients to be “full”, but somehow does not make you spiritually filled. Holy Oak has gone around the world to see its variations in both environmental and human nature, and placed his finding in his lyrics.
Lyrically, Holy Oak approaches music like an anthropologist. He sings his observations as if his rhythms were a journal. Vocally, Holy Oak can draw out the remarkable in the “unremarkable”. “Silver Boys” and “Isabelle” are two examples of his capacity to sing music with a sincerity that rivets details, otherwise, irrelevant. How we move in life seems “boring” or “unimportant” to most of us compared to what we do in life. Yet, to Holy Oak, how we move in life affects what we do and what can do. It is as if everyone can do a kick, but not everyone can kick a target. In this world, we are so obsessed with doing rather than being, but Holy Oak believes you cannot do anything without being. With folksy, electric guitars adding volume and magic to his arrangements, this deep idea become a simple, easy listen. For More Information On Holy Oak And To Buy Second Son On June 9 Click Here.
