I have a soft spot for demo type recordings. Phone recordings quickly tracked to capture an idea, or something recorded to 4-track cassette. Something honest, nothing shiny or plastic about it, just candid and open where the song and the words have to speak…and if they don’t it is very obvious.
Haunt the House has a track up on their bandcamp page called “Holy Revival” that is just that. There is nothing pretentiousness to the recording. It is just songwriter Will Houlihan, his guitar, and a story. In it’s mere two minutes and twelve seconds, it manages to captivate and stop my heart.
This to me is a glimpse behind the curtain of one of the best songwriter’s in the North East, hell one of the best in the country, or even the world in my eyes. A beautiful and wonderful blink into an idea that weaved itself into a writer’s mind and needed to get out and up for the world to hear.
When Will croons ‘holy revival, ho-ly revival, holy revival’ it chills my spine. He has a way of commanding a listener’s attention like no one else I know. There is true emotion in how Houlihan attacks a song. So deep, so beautiful.
So go listen to this today.