Holy Fawn
Death Spells

How strong are the things that are not there? In the balance between fullness and emptiness, what weight does absence hold against presence?
I am in the garden, on a sunny late November morning, the sun is high and the sky is clear, but the rays no longer warm (absence of warmth). I'm sitting under a tree, playing with the brown leaves that have fallen from the branches, I pick them up, squeeze them, and they crumble between my fingers. The sound is pleasant, the leaves are crunchy, but they are dead (absence of life). Then suddenly I start thinking about a person, the past, when I was little, and how much I enjoyed running through the woods in autumn and lying among piles of golden leaves, while this person's watchful but amused gaze watched over me. Only, this person is no longer here, and the smile that animated my face as I remembered turns, the face becomes serious: now only memories remain (absence of affection). I get up, head towards the house, and with an almost instinctive movement, I touch the ivy whose leaves, now fiery red, twist around the balcony. I expect the bright color to translate into warmth, but it doesn't: the leaves are cold, moistened by the morning mist, they almost seem like plastic, fake (absence of warmth, of life, of expectations).
When absence hits you with its presence, it makes a deafening noise because it reveals itself in all its power, it makes you understand how functional it is to everything, how “what is not there” is as important as “what is there”, if not even more so. Absence makes us appreciate presence, emptiness makes us love fullness, cold eventually makes us desire the warmth that will warm our bones for a while.
“Death Spells” by the Americans Holy Fawn is a record about absence. Not that this is the concept of the album, or at least, this is my interpretation of it. It's an album that talks about ghosts, that describes the cold late autumn mornings when the last autumn rays of the sun are a warm memory, you vaguely perceive them, but they are perhaps more in your head than on your skin. It is a perfect album for thinking about oneself, for wandering aimlessly, for making peace with the world, or for withdrawing from it, if necessary. The band has masterfully distilled a “non-genre,” a proposal not easily assimilable to other groups. In no particular order, the influences range from dream pop to post-rock, from shoegaze to post-black metal, from post-punk with darkwave reverberations to emocore. One moment you perceive I Love You but I’ve chosen Darkness, the next moment Thursday or the typical explosions of Envy. Then a gust of icy wind arrives, and Clouds Collide comes with all its emotional charge combined with post-black metal; but there is sweetness in this melancholy, there are the dream pop and shoegaze of the latest Klimt 1918 to mitigate the chill with warm and reassuring caresses of warmth. Absence of a musical genre, but not of intent: our guys know where they want to go, they go straight to your chest, the pulsating bass replaces your heart, the guitar riffs flow like blood in your veins, and the muscles contract every time the scream lashes you. As mentioned, it is a perfect album for this time of the year, overwhelming if you are living moments in your life where ghosts play hide and seek with your memories, an intimate but at the same time suitable album for everyone.
In all this absence, there is a certainty, a safe presence: we have a true gem in our hands, don't let it slip away.