Review & Full Album Premiere: Trevor’s Head, Soma Holiday
[Click play above to stream Soma Holiday by Trevor’s Head in its entirety. Album is out today, April 30, on APF Records.]
Breathing and lush synth begins Soma Holiday by UK trio Trevor’s Head, and from the dug-in post-Kyuss thrust-into-richer-psychedelic-hypnosis of “Sleepstate” through the secret track about fucking chickens — way to take Alabama down a peg, guys — the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Roger Atkins, bassist/vocalist Aaron Strachan and drummer/vocalist/keyboardist/flutist Matt Ainsworth (all also contribute percussion) — I wouldn’t exactly call the record progressive front to back, but it has those tendencies and is definitely varied and thoughtful in its way, in addition to being most definitely the product of children of the 1990s.
Discernible influences tell the tale from the aforementioned Kyuss, to Orange Goblin on “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Better,” Tool and System of a Down on “Bomb,” and more mellow grunge in the verses of centerpiece “Clerical Error” that meet with quirky starts and stops maybe derived from Queens of the Stone Age or maybe just the result of meshing all the rest with a bit of the UK’s modern heavy boom. Swapping out vocalists adds to the sonic diversity as Trevor’s Head, for whom Soma Holiday marks their third album and debut on APF Records, but even punker cuts like “Billion $ Fart” and the 38-second “Writer’s Block” bear the hallmarks of a ’90s stylization, especially when paired next to the inventive basslines and proggy melody of “Ghost” in the case of the former or the riff-forward motion of the aforementioned “Clerical Error” in the case of the latter.
Ultimately though, if Soma Holiday is progressive at all amid the occasional fart joke and “Verbal Hygiene,” which seems to take a stance on political correctness one way or the other, it’s progressive in a metallic sense. Recorded at Foel Studios by Mike Bew, Gazz Rogers and Tom Wild (the latter of whom also mixed and mastered), the guitar tone of Atkins has more crunch than fuzz, which leaves room for Strachan‘s low end to shine throughout — as behind the guitar solo on “Verbal Hygiene,” just for one example — and as “Harvest Ritual” moves from Primus-style storytelling its quick intro into more straight-ahead desert sprinting, the thickness of the riffing remains a tie to both the punkish cuts and broader-reaching atmospheric pieces like “Ghost” just before and the acoustic, percussion-laced “Departed” later on, though admittedly that track is a standout either way in its surroundings near the end of the record, with “Boomeranxiety,” “Bomb” and closer “Welcome (The Unburdening)” behind it offering some of Soma Holiday‘s proggiest stretches, though again, those are more than a little undercut by that secret track.
“Boomeranxiety” asks the very British question, “Chips or crisps?” amid a suitably frenetic riff and drum progression and willfully weird vocal approach before turning into bass-led semi-ska bounce and finishing out with a return to its central riff, and “Bomb” references Slayer in the lyrics while building a memorable hook before a scream-laced bridge that turns to the post-Helmet start-stopping “Welcome (The Unburdening),” which ties together much of the album almost in spite of itself — that is, I don’t think it was written or placed in order to do so specifically, but there’s something about closing the album with “Welcome” and starting it with “Sleepstate” that seems to be purposefully backwards in a way Trevor’s Head might very much enjoy on a conceptual level.
A word of warning to those who’d take it on: Soma Holiday most definitely has its tongue-in-cheek moments, and some of those might lead one to think that even its more serious side is facetious on some level. I’m not sure in the end if it is or if the whole thing is one big joke to the band, but either way, that concern should be secondary to the actual scope Trevor’s Head bring to the album’s 53-minute span. There are jarring moments among all the changes, but these don’t feel like accidents either, and it seems more like Ainsworth, Atkins and Strachan want the listener to meet them on their own level rather than have the band make overtures to accessibility in order to engage as many people as possible.
That lack of compromise ends up being a strength, and as Soma Holiday is Trevor’s Head‘s second album as a three-piece behind 2016’s Tricolossus, it’s easy to hear in the growth from one record to the next that they’re in the process of becoming the band they want to be and have set about refining and expanding the parameters of their sound to make it happen. Not everyone’s going to get it. Not everyone’s going to want to get it. But for a select few, Soma Holiday is going to feel oddly like home in its attitude and style, and in accomplishing that, it would seem to meet precisely the band’s goals in its making.
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Tags: APF Records, Soma Holiday, Surrey, Trevor's Head, Trevor's Head Soma Holiday, UK
Great record! Eclectic electric!