HOLIDAY & THE ADVENTURE POP COLLECTIVE are a core trio of musicians from the Encinitas/ San Diego area of Southern California called Derric Oliver, Louis Caverly and Tommy Becker. They have an intriguing - if slightly unwieldy - name, a smart line in three-way harmonies in the old, established Crosby, Stills and Nash tradition and have already released a full-length ebut album entitled "Good (Adventures in Extreme Optimism Vol.1)", plus two EPs and now this mini-album collection within the last six months or so. Whew! Are you keeping up with this, Bob Pollard?
Actually, it's difficult to deny a band with a song title as excellent as "Julius Caesar Had It Coming" (from "Good"), and while it doesn't appear here, a fair portion of these nine songs also get your reviewer onside, although it must be said that there is a slightly rough-hewn, half-finished quality to most of these tunes that may or may not detract. After a number of spins, the jury in my head remains out on that particular point.
The album opens with the title-track, which sets out Holiday's folky, semi-acoustic stall, with Fender Rhodes buoying up acoustic guitars, whispered observations on life ("I hold others to standards I myself can't keep and it consumes me") and brief flashes of those killer harmonies. Strange, but attractive.
The rest of the album is similarly downbeat. Pianist Louis Caverly's "High School Assembly" is about the closest thing to an 'anthem', but even that's slow and dignified, while plaintive ballads like "The Pill#1" and "Saturday Nights" are pretty and more than a tad brittle, which usually works in their favour.
In places it doesn't come off quite so well. "Am I Wrong?" for instance - despite a nice, chesty vocal is more of a thumbnail in search of direction than anything, while the - undoubtedly heartfelt "Sean O'Kane" - a tribute to the helicopter pilot who was killed off the Encinitas coast - is an unlikely Irish wake of a concluder which veers towards mawkishness as they sing the chorus of "We cry for Ireland." Still, the obvious sincerity ensures they just about get away with it.
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However, their shaky, fragile approach can also work in their favour. "Become," for instance, nods to both blooped-out electronica and strummed-out, hazy Americana with slightly creepy harmonies and mild feedback closer in spirit to Thin White Rope than CSN. Arguably even better is "Out On A Limb" which is basically Jonathan Richman as sung by the nutter assassin in "Dirty Harry." "You are the tree, I am the branches", they sing, sounding both childlike and extremely disturbed. Bloody good, though.
Holiday & The Adventure Pop Collective are a strange bunch, whose obvious inclination towards natural harmony is offset here by darker undercurrents, however brief and gentle their acoustic interludes may be. Nevertheless, they bear repeated listening and while they don't always fulfil the "Potential" hinted at in the title, you get the feeling that with a little more focus and perhaps more studio time something memorable could well blossom here.
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