Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn, has some of the shortest, darkest days in the world: Thanks to cloud cover and haze, an average one includes less than five hours of sunlight. On their debut album, Slow Sundown, Tallinn’s Holy Motors waste no time trying to hide the way that feels for them. In this band’s slow, chilly songs, you’re always being watched, and the moon might be your only friend. “Hold me like the moon/Through night time,” singer Eliann Tulve sighs in a rare moment of warm, major-key respite. “I’m planning to drive until my heavenly place arrives,” she adds moments later, as the band cruises on at an unhurried pace behind her.
Those lines, from “Silently for Me” and the subsequent “Signs,” respectively, embody both of Holy Motors’ favorite images. The first, of course, is the moon, which looms over this album from the opening track, “Honeymooning,” onward. That song’s tone couldn’t be further from honeymoon-esque, unless your idea of one takes place at the bottom of a swamp. Yet this is Holy Motors’ comfort zone: Tulve sounds at ease as the lights go down and her bandmates gradually rise up in the mix. Their lineup features three guitarists, less to create a sense of volume or power than to maintain some peripherally detectable presence that’s always over your shoulder, never in your face.
The album’s other core motif is the lonely night drive. “I am alone in the valley/Looking for a girl I’d like to marry,” Tulve sings to introduce the desolate, country-tinged “Valley.” Spooky, empty highways crop up several more times, including quite literally in the video for “Sleeprydr,” the crescendo moment of the album and the band’s most evocative exploration of the theme. The guitarists, meanwhile, keep croaking out clunky, echoing thuds, like the sound of a stone skipping across ice, but pitched several octaves lower—ice on the highway to hell, maybe.
Tulve’s peacefully resigned voice and the guitarists’ infinity-pool-style shimmer court easy comparisons to Mazzy Star and Slowdive. But Holy Motors shade towards the darker side of that sound, and they’re a little too eager to let the world know it. The lyrics on Slow Sundown are regularly, astoundingly on-the-nose. One minute into the album, Tulve informs us that “Behind the gloom/We’re drowning/In our own tears.” Some things go without saying, but that doesn’t always stop Tulve and the band from saying it.
If Holy Motors are limited in range, they show genuine skill at bringing their one mood to vivid life. We’re all alone at the end of the day, Slow Sundown suggests. It’s only fair to wonder if they’ll ever dare to show us what their world looks like when the sun comes up.
