Start Listening To: Holy Motors

Their debut album, ‘Horse’, takes us on a dream country adventure among eerie Estonian streets.

Their newest video for ‘Road Stars’, directed by Riley Lynch, features a girl (Riley’s youngest sister, how cute) and a boy in cowboy-worthy attire lipsyncing to the green screen country backdrop. It’s Holy Motors at their finest, showing off their creepingly sentimental aesthetics, drenched in softly-distorted noises and spaced-out melodies. Since 2012, they’ve been on a strange musical ride, daydreaming sounds into reality. On the debut album ‘Horse’, we’re invited to take part in their spectacular rodeo. Expect Mulholland Drive meets Orville Peck contest level. Wanting to get a headstart into the competition, we’ve invited Holy Motors to give us some riding tips.

Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

Eliann Tulve: We are Holy Motors, coming from a small Baltic country Estonia. The music we make is inspired by dreams of the west mixed with the reality of the northeast.

How did it all start?

Eliann: We had a movie night watching Aki Kaurismäki’s “The man without a past” at our first practice room in the winter of 2012. Then the boys picked up their guitars and with sound they created our own space to hang out in. Then we started making soundtracks together.

If you were to describe your sound to someone who’d never heard you before, what would you say?

Eliann: Lots of twangy and dark guitar with dreamy vocals floating around it. I also like to use the term dream country.

How do you produce your music?

Eliann: There are times when someone brings something - a lyric, a melody, a riff. And we go from there. And there are times when we’re just playing together and something we like comes out of it. We work quite collectively, and we’re good at that. But we’ve worked together with Carson Cox, Craig Dyer, Leonard Kaage and Anton Newcombe on production.

Where did you get the name for the album?

Eliann: We were just working on the album’s designs with Lauri and my brother Jakob, trying out different ideas. We were giving it a lot of thought and at one point, it all just seemed too much. Talking about other artist’s album names, we arrived at Horse as a joke. But then it just seemed like a perfect fit for those songs, the cover art and the name glued it all together into one piece.

What was it like working with Riley Lynch on your latest video?

Eliann: Riley made it quite easy for us. I’d been thinking about working with him on something for a while. We had a first meeting where he presented some ideas he’d gotten. We dug what he said and then we just let him do what seemed best to him. Then we got the final video and I love it. I am crazy about Lula and Henry, they are incredible rockstars of Road Stars.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s important to you?

Eliann: TOPS “Tender Opposites”. I love TOPS! They are just an amazing bunch. They make music that makes me reminisce about my time growing up. I feel like I could have been 9, skating around town, listening to TOPS. Though that wasn’t the case, that’s what I was listening to when I recall those moments now. “Tender Opposites” came out in 2012, and those years are very close to my heart to this day. I started finding music that I still connect to, and which had a huge impact on what influenced Holy Motors at the beginning.

What do you hate right now?

Eliann: These days it’s cold, wet & dark in Estonia. I don’t mind it being dark (yet, though it will become a heavy baggage to carry soon enough) but the cold along with the rain is horrible.

What do you love right now?

Eliann: Because it’s so dark, and it’s misty because of the cold, it feels eerie on the streets in the evening, like it could be 2 in the morning, but the city’s still wide awake, and that’s odd. I love that uncanny feeling.

Is there any new music from 2021 that you’re enjoying?

Eliann: I was listening to Dawn to Dawn a lot this summer. Well, the three songs they’ve released so far. I’m looking forward to more releases. Mart Avi put out an album “Vega Never Sets” in late 2020. Then Tan Cologne, who also released their debut album “Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico” in 2020, which is

The perfect soundtrack for the colder days ahead. And just recently I’ve had Pavel Milyakov & Yana Pavlova’s collaborative album “Blue” on repeat.

What comes next in the Holy Motors story?

Eliann: We have been writing a lot this year, hopefully we’ll get to share these diamond songs very soon.