Eerie Gaits

John Ross grew up near Holopaw, and he chose to borrow its namesake for his second record under the moniker Eerie Gaits. Much like how the area itself is independent from traditional governance, Holopaw the album is similarly untied from genre and unmoored from singular temperament. The nine instrumental compositions ripple between upbeat guitar strums, bristly fingerpicking, and pensive sections of dense, misty synths. Songs like “What’s Eating You” and “The Rainbow Trout And The Wicker Creel” are the sort of full-bodied yet placid indie-rock he writes with his Brooklyn band Wild Pink (who’ve received glowing coverage at Pitchfork, NPR, Stereogum, etc.).

In a stark contrast to its hopeful beginning, the album ends with a grim fade into nothingness. Compared to the first Eerie Gaits record, 2017’s Bridge Music (which was inspired by the act of driving over bridges), Ross thinks that Holopaw i s “darker and more joyful at the same time.” Like Holopaw, a town that was mostly abandoned after its mill closed in the 1940’s but remains a lush and picturesque segment of sunny Florida, this album captures the duality of rural America; a shifting, defiant undulation between bleakness and beauty. (Bio by Eli Enis)