The other night, I started listening to Holopaw by Eerie Gaits because Apple Music told me to. I was really enjoying the opening track, “What’s Eating You,” and kept waiting for the verse to start, but the words never came.
I can’t say I’m all that mad about it, though. It’s really good at setting a mood, which for me is the sense of being at the end of Act 2 or a late 90s or early 2000s romantic comedy, when the protagonist comes out of a crisis with a heightened sense of resolve, and — either packing up boxes while leaving the office, or turning around to look at the front door of the house for the last time and nod sagely — thinks, Maybe I’ll get through this after all.
That’s even more intense in “The Rainbow Trout and the Wicker Creel,” which adds the feeling of music you’d hear laid on top of a montage of stock footage. Like many of the tracks on Holopaw, it feels like music that’s supposed to supplement something else, either lyrics or images, instead of standing on its own. But I still can’t help but enjoy it.
“Saw You Through the Trees” is my favorite track, because it’s the one that works best as a standalone composition. It doesn’t sound like anything’s missing, but it could also work great as part of the soundtrack for a movie that’s heartwarming and uplifting AF.