Holy Motors Heavens Night Vinyl

Holy Motors’ third studio album, Heaven’s Night, pairs the band’s signature Western dreamscapes with pop hooks and new-wave textures that mark new territory for the Estonian band. Notably, there is a new sweetness to the collection of songs on Heaven’s Night, which features characters who step away from the doomed sunsets and outback melancholy of 2020’s Horse. As the band puts it, their new sound is "sweet as dripping honey, sad like summer rain."While fans might notice greater accessibility in these songs, Heaven’s Night is still a classic Holy Motors record with all the attendant enigma. Frontwoman Eliann Tulve and guitarist Lauri Raus continue to write about characters searching for something more, often in the American West. In these new songs, the band brings us closer to these lost souls as they navigate right and wrong. As on the album’s first single, “Tough Crush,” and the album’s title track, the band paints vivid landscapes where characters seek escape on fleeting nighttime drives and one-night stands, looking to catch a breath of fresh air from lives that have become boring or even tedious in one way or another.The band has been working on these tracks on the road and in their practice space since coalescing in 2021, around the addition of guitarist Ivar Mägi and multi-instrumentalist Villem Sarapuu, who joined original members Eliann Tulve (vocals) and Lauri Raus (guitar), along with long-time drummer Caspar Salo.Without a doubt, Heaven’s Night is Holy Motors’ most varied album to date. From the furious gallop of “The Last Ones” to Tulve’s noirish duet with Bambara’s Reid Bateh, “Under My Tongue,” Heaven’s Night throws a new spin on the band’s world, one that is a little less haunted and a little more dangerous. These days, we could all use the escape.