Last year, Seattle indie rockers Chastity Belt released Live Laugh Love, and album that we liked, and they followed it up with their track "That Guy." The song is Chastity Belt's contribution to a new split 7" that also features the Austin psych-rock band Holy Wave. Today, the Holy Wave song from that split is out in the world.
Holy Wave's half of the new split is "Time Crisis Too," a lush, cascade of shimmery sounds that reminds of what Mercury Rev were doing in the late '90s. For whatever reasons, I expected something a lot more muffled than this, but no, these guys aren't playing. This is Holy Wave's follow-up to their 2023 album Five Of Cups. In a press release, guitarist and keyboard player Ryan Fuson explains that Holy Wave have had this one in the chamber for years:
We immediately started working on new music after the Interloper session. It felt effortless after the album, so we wrote as much as possible. "Time Crisis Too" was one of the first ones to come out; it happened organically before we had any direction. We continued working like this until March 2020, when we started a short East Coast/Midwest tour. "Time Crisis Too" was added to that tour’s setlist, and it was going great. Sometimes, you can’t totally understand a song until you play it night after night. So that’s what we did -- we played it every night until Chicago, where it ended with the pandemic. It’s hard to believe the song got shelved because I love it so much, but after that Chicago show, it did get shelved. It wasn’t until we recorded some songs in 2022 that we played it again. We still haven’t played it live since then, but maybe by the time you read this, that will have changed.
Check out "Time Crisis Too" below.
The Chastity Belt/Holy Wave split 7" is out 2/7 on Suicide Squeeze.
