Mistletone

HOLY FUCK BRISBANE SHOW:

• Thu 24 April – The Zoo with Blank Realm. Co-presented with Consume + 4ZZZ. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.

HOLY FUCK planned to take a break.  They needed it, having toured steady from 2006 to 2011.  Instead they had babies, adopted pets, and produced records for other artists (such as METZ and Lights, earning their first gold record); they stole away to play international festivals whilst writing new material and playing small venues under secret names; they even started new bands that also went out and toured the world.

So much for the break. Now they are ready to come out of this pseudo-retirement, playing their first actual tour since 2011, in Australia.

The back story of this enigmatic Canadian band, who prefer to be called Holy Fuck but often get censored in the weirdest and most convoluted way, goes sort of like this:

In a time of polished indie-dance Holy Fuck emerged with broken casios and piles of noise-making ‘stuff’ to play sweaty frenetic shows that followed less a set-list than a spontaneous energy.  They caught the attention of Brooklyn dance punks !!! (chk chk chk) and former Antipop Consortium MC, Beans, as well as Montreal’s burgeoning buzz band Wolf Parade.  After touring with the aforementioned acts they signed with the then-brand-new XL offshoot, Young Turks.

From there it turns into a smeared blur: Coachella, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, plane tickets and endless summers playing European festivals, a tour with MIA, shout-outs from Lou Reed, Radiohead, Michael Stipe, shows in Japan, China, Australia & New Zealand (touring for Meredith Music Festival, Laneway Festival and Harvest), a stage-invasion by hundreds of fans at Barcelona’s Primavera (destroying everything in their path), more plane tickets, more endless summers, Coachella and Glastonbury again, and another shout out from Lou Reed (RIP).

Somewhere in there is a hit-and-run on a Ohio highway, whiplash, a destroyed van, an ousting from the Canadian government surrounding the controversy of their name (saying they aren’t Canadian enough for arts funding), and swine flu.  They were voted Canada’s best live band by the CBC and were nominated for both a Polaris prize and a Juno (which we know may not mean anything to anyone not living in Canada… but all in all, not too shabby).