Holy Wave are circumventing the algorithm

Sweating inside with the air conditioning on, I queue up Holy Wave’s latest album, i’m DADA. Over the past decade, the Austin, Texas group has created distinct and nuanced albums full of introspective psych-rock grooves that provide cathartic musical chill. 

Before long, I’ve settled into the second track, a single they’ve pre-released titled “s33.u.in/HAL”. At a time when nearly everything is explained, suggested, filtered with AI, I am happy to do some human deciphering of the song title underneath the title, “See You in Hell”. I chuckle to myself, wondering, if that really is the message, who exactly the band wants to see in hell, if the current heat wave is a version of hell, and how many listeners might notice. Multi-instrumentalist Ryan Fuson deconstructed the song title in a recent press release, “It’s like a prayer to the God of shortcomings, a child God that we are raising to one day be our saviour.” 

Later that day, I’m Zooming with the four members of the band to dig a little deeper into those kind of cryptic pronouncements. They've have gathered to practice at what they call “Holy Wave HQ,” Julian Ruiz’s house in East Austin, to rehearse for the North American leg of their upcoming tour and promote their latest album. 

Over a decade ago, Holy Wave was born out of two pairs of high school friends from El Paso, Rob Fuson and Kyle Hager, along with guitarist Joey Cook, and drummer Ruiz. Holy Wave has proved that they’re a deeply human band that’s in it for the long haul. They are never about what’s “trending” or what the new hype is, and most of the time they seem able to circumvent any limiting algorithm. For their latest record, they tell me, they just wanted to have fun and spend as much time together working on the music. “We just kind of want to be us… just the best version of ourselves. We’re not trying to be the next ‘whatever’.” 

Fuson and Hager share the portion of the band’s vocals, guitars, and synths, depending on the tune or perhaps the moment, though they tell me that the songwriting is a group process: “On the opening track, Julian [drummer] wrote the music with no vocals, then we asked Rob to sing on it.” Hager also admits that because they didn’t have a dedicated bass player – though in the past they have – they were able to share some of the bass duties, including some “key-bass,” or bass played on the keyboard. On that note, we stop to discuss the Ray Manzarek of it all. 

Nothing seems too tricky or too rigid for this group of old pals, who are laidback, funny, and warm. Talking with them feels a little like crashing a house party, where even though I don’t know the hosts, they make me feel as if I’ve known them forever. It may be that I’m picking up on how well they know each other, which is obvious from their banter. Take Hager, for example, who is one of the most recognisable faces of the band, perhaps due to his long wavy blond hair parted down the middle. When I ask if he’s wearing his hair tucked back under his hat because he’s gotten his hair cut, the band quips, “Kyle’s never gotten a haircut.” 

Hager is also an outlier in the group for another reason: he is the “dada” in the new album’s title, the only father in the group with two young daughters. “My little one turns two in October, and my older one, she just turned four in May,” he tells me. He also admits that trying to balance the first leg of the upcoming tour, then the Europe/UK portion of it in the autumn, and then back to the West Coast of the US for November, may be challenging – but he’s up for it. 

While the other members of the band aren’t parents, their own parents fed them music that influenced the Holy Wave sound. I ask if their parents were fans of British Invasion – 1960s music brought to the US by British bands like the Beatles and the Kinks. Both Ruiz and Hager admit their parents were “Beatles heads,” though the vocal stylings of the Beach Boys were even more of an influence. Hager tells me, “My dad taught me how to sing harmonies with the Beach Boys when I was a little kid.” 

It wasn’t just 60s music that influenced the band, though. Fuson mentions that he grew up on his parents’ disco and new wave records. “We would watch VH1’s “Top 10 music videos” together at night on TV.” I also asked him if the Cranberries were influential, as I noticed their echoes on a few songs, particularly the introduction to the single “Dewey’s Dirge”. I could hear a slowed-down “Ode to My Family”. He confesses that “the Cranberries are definitely a reference on a few songs of ours.” 

Speaking of odes to family, half of Holy Wave is Mexican, so they chose to record the new LP on the coast in Ensenada, not far from where they grew up in the El Paso border region. This was a reunion of sorts with Mexican duo and frequent collaborator Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, who runs the studio, El Derrumbe (or “landslide” in Spanish). The main tracking for the LP was split across a few sessions, but they share that it was mostly mixed at Studio 22 in Los Angeles by longtime friend/engineer Joo-Joo Ashworth. “We also added some last minute flourishes… bongos, shakers, and backup harmonies whenever we heard spots for them.” 

When Holy Wave set out on the second leg of their tour, to the UK and Europe this autumn, they hope to be something of cultural ambassador for the US, bridging the gap between the hellscape the world sees on TV and what (most) real Americans are like: “We’re trying to show that not all Americans are ‘bad.’” They compare their own “patriotism” to rooting for the US in the World Cup. “It may not be the best country in the world right now, but it’s ours.” 

That’s no easy task, and Fuson divulges that he gets major pre-show jitters. The other members of the band diagnose it as “clinical anxiety,” more than nervousness or stage fright. He describes excessive pacing, and anxiety during soundchecks while setting up his keyboards and plugging them in. On stage, however, he says “once we get through the first song, it’s fine.” The band also discusses how staying closer in proximity to one another on stage helps them communicate or “vibe off each other” better. Joey Cook, who had been somewhat quiet up to this point in the interview, says, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face… we’re good at things going wrong and knowing what to do.” 

Holy Wave is a rare bird – a band of friendships and families, always looking to connect with one another, their fans, and new audiences. When considering the rapid pace and the automated artificially intelligent systems that cage us, Holy Wave remind their listeners what it’s like to be human.