Hollow Sunshine manage to drag their feet and bang their heads at the same time on their newest track, “Cold Truth”. It’s a strange, weirdly disconcerting combination of sounds—the Northern California duo has enough pop sensibility to construct songs with familiar verse-chorus-verse structures replete with catchy hooks and sing-a-long lines, but is also heavy enough to tour with Wreck & Reference. I mean, we once called their music a “dirge-heavy cosmic-swamp-pop affair.”
“Cold Truth” is definitely an expansion of said celestial-shit-water aesthetic, in the best way possible. Downtuned guitars fall to sludge-metal depths, while the drums and bass lag closely behind in the murk. It’s like a cross-pollination between Sleep and Sunny Day Real Estate, a weird (and enjoyable) melodic take on stoner metal. When lead singer Morgan Enos laments, “And I don’t know why,” the vocals are lost in the barrage of fuzzed out and cosmic noise, a fitting height for Hollow Sunshine’s unique conflation of abrasion and effervescence.
“Cold Truth” is the A side of a 7-inch due late June/early July via Nostalgium Directive.
