Founded in 2017 in Austin, Texas, the band members have collectively amassed over 300+ shows played. Spearheaded by the songwriting of Jared Mullins and using two lead guitarists, the four-piece collective was invited to record their debut album at Radiohead’s Courtyard Studios in Oxfordshire, England. Together with producer Ian Davenport (Band of Skulls, Supergrass, Philip Selway of Radiohead) the band recorded a blistering 50-minute, 12-track album that combs through a diverse array of blues-tinged rock packed with burly riffs, hooks, and fleet-fingered twin guitar interplay.
By David Fletcher
If you remember, or if you just know your rock history well enough, there was a time in the early 90s when the entire rock world was ditching its hairspray, spandex and girls, girls, girls for the doldrums of grunge.
It was at that moment when The Black Crowes came out of their freaky-deaky time machine to belt out “Pretty little thing, let me light your candle ’cause-a mama I’m sure hard to handle now, yessir’am,” showing that no matter what gets popular, there is always a place for unbridled rock ‘n’ roll.
Here in 2019, with the musical world as diverse as it is in its insistence on genre-bending originality for the sake of just being original, comes Austin-based primitive rockers Holy Roller Baby out of that same time machine with an earworm of their own.
What is immediately noticeable after listening to their new single “Ravings at Your Window” is just how damn infectious it is.
If the smooth repetition of the song’s chorus, “I’d bet today’s the day that you gonna climb down like I want you to, yeah,” doesn’t have you at least humming the rhythm to yourself while you fold your laundry… well then you just don’t have any appreciation for the classics.
Though more in line with grunge singers Scott Weiland and Layne Staley than Chris Robinson, singer and guitarist Jared Mullins mellow tenor perfectly encapsulates the steamy seductiveness of those lyrics.
“The song is about a pair of unsatisfied young kids constrained by the limitations that a small-town life have to offer,” Mullins says. “The guy in the story insists that today finally be the day they leave the drudgery behind and head ‘anywhere but here’ together. His nagging insistence on making a rash decision must be crazy or seem like the mad ravings of a lunatic but come on…He’s at your window, car is ready, let’s go!”
To accompany the song, the band has just released a video to give real images to the story going on in the song. Trading the window of a house for the window of an old truck barreling down a dirt road, the video mixes shots of the story with dimly lit shots of the band rocking out in their 70s truck stop inspired attire.
While the video depicts a couple that only lasts for a short ride, the song’s flailing guitars and thunderous drums leave us with the real sense that this is just the beginning for Holy Roller Baby.
