According to the Puritan Themes press release, the album’s lead single “Chain Gang,” is “an imaginary take on if Cat Stevens had smoked a ton of salvia and taken a much darker route within the world of dense, story-telling songwriting.”
Experiences with salvia can be impactful. Fun trips where textures replicate themselves across various surfaces, or terrifying experiences where death comes to collect you while floating through abyss until, finally, reality snaps back in and you start screaming, “What the fuck!”
There are familiar aspects on Puritan Themes, melodies that seem classic, as if existing at the edges of memory, as well as unexpected textures—sounds difficult to source, creating a narrative of sorts. There is darkness, too, though a darkness born more of awe and beauty than the fear of death, existing as nothing in nothingness. It’s a travelogue, then, through the real world and the cosmic, interior world.
Puritan Themes is the second Holy Sons album of the year. Where July’s Lost Decade IV was a collection of recordings that Emil Amos—the guru behind Holy Sons, Grails, Lilacs & Champagne, Om, and more—had made throughout the ’90s, Puritan Themes is a set of new songs, Amos’ first album of new material since 2020’s Raw & Disfigured, and the fourth album he’s released through the seminal Thrill Jockey Records label.
Related: Read our review of Lost Decade IV, Holy Sons' first album of 2025.
As with all of Amos’ output, the album is difficult to pigeonhole. There are bits of folk here, some alt-country there, both with a psychedelic edge—sounds reminiscent of 1970s Laurel Canyon. There’s also the sense that a hip-hop producer worked on the album. Sounds get layered on top of each other, elements shift in the mix, a couple samples even show up in mid album tripshift on “Radio Seance.”
At times the album becomes cinematic, the music creating a narrative as if it’s a film score. Sometimes one of these modes will take the lead, with the others working away below the surface. At other times they weave together, butt up against each other, threatening to overtake one another.
Early album track, “Stand Up Straight Again,” starts with contemplative drone, then there’s a sound—twinkling and sparkling—bringing to mind a star exceptionally bright in the sky. When the guitar shows up, it’s full-on western soundtrack. Albeit a western in which the duel takes place at midnight instead of high noon, waged in the interior instead of against an external foe. Amos’ voice comes on as a rush, rolling across the song like a storm as the instrumentation swells, layering and whipping around the listener like wind and rain. The storm passes and we find ourselves floating above the desert, being wrapped up in the night sky, as we travel deeper into ourselves.
The journey into the self continues on the following track, the aforementioned “Radio Seance.” Starting with what sounds like gunfire from an old radio drama, a sample seeming to echo and reinforce the narrative created in the previous song. The song features a sample of the sadly mostly forgotten Bee Gees song “All by Myself,” a bit of ’60s rock that’s a must listen for anyone only familiar with their disco output. These are seemingly familiar sounds—you feel like you know them, even if you don’t. They drift in and out of an instrumental not out of place in the astral traveling scene, when the universe tries to pry you open in order to show itself to you in total.
“Everything” has a rumbling, shambling beat to it. Throughout the song, the line “Everything I need to see / I saw” is repeated as mantra. It’s wall-of-sound, ominous, and claustrophobic. That weight is lifted on the following track, “Edge of the Bay,” a featherlight song in comparison.
“Edge of the Bay” is an aimless afternoon, walking around, half lost in thought, half lost to the beauty of small, vivid details of the world around you. There’s “the rhythm of the boat on the waves,” and “bright police lights in my eyes.” What to do now? Continue with the life we’re collectively living right now or make a change? Will moving cause a change or is it running away? Should work be started on a new project, or is the better option to go back to one of many unfinished projects carried around like some sort of psychic baggage. We need “celestial maps, a catalogue of clues,” to make it another day, week, month, year.
The album winds down on the one-two hit of standout tracks “Fully Burnt” and “One Diving Rod.” “Fully Burnt” is all smoke and haze. Amos’ vocals drift in through the blur, feeling stoned and languid at first, before the smoke clears, showing itself as more lithe than originally assumed, becoming serpentine, undulating as it propels itself forward.
Final track, “One Diving Rod” sees the album off in fittingly epic fashion. Clocking in at 10 minutes, it’s the longest track on the album, and one of the most dynamic—weaving together the elements of the preceding tracks: The western theme of “Stand Up Straight Again,” the narrative drive of “Chain Gang,” and the cosmic nature of the album as a whole. It’s all here, married to a track playing with the quiet-loud dynamic more than any of the previous songs. The result is a building and exploding, plateauing and morphing. It’s a hauntingly beautiful end to the album… and to the trip.
Puritan Themes is appropriately out October 31 on Thrill Jockey Records. The album can be picked up via Holy Sons' Bandcamp as a vinyl record or a digital download.
