Just over a week from the release of the new album Puritan Themes (Thrill Jockey) on October 31st, Holy Sons, aka Emil Amos (Grails, Om, Lilacs & Champagne), has shared the new single “Fully Burnt”. The song’s haunting, dreamlike atmosphere billows out from smoky synth textures and inquisitive guitar lines that swell into a full-throated crescendo, at once beautiful and foreboding as Amos questions how we reflect the darknesses of the world in ourselves. “‘Fully Burnt’ is the emotional result of working in the ‘Chain Gang’ [‘Puritan Themes’ centerpiece],” says Amos. “It’s a toxically technicolored take on being exhausted by an empty culture and one’s own attempt to make sense of the rat race. Will this dynamic ruin you and turn you into a reflection of its pessimism?… Or will you try and escape to an ivory tower of loneliness instead.”

Puritan Themes steps out of time and reaches back to 70’s sounds in order to escape the machinations of the current world. The compositions return to a more innocent ground floor when listeners have the time to sit with an entire album and let the lyrics sink in. Everything is recorded, performed, and mixed by Amos. Amos has been a beacon in the world of home production for decades now, a progenitor and godfather of modern bedroom pop and one-man orchestras, making dense, organic-sounding arrangements primarily on his own. His free-wheeling, adventurous spirit as a producer mirrors his cerebral and sprawling landmark podcast “Drifter’s Sympathy,” which feels inexorably tied to his practice of home recording.

Puritan Themes is a record that knowingly barely fits into the modern world. The album’s relaxed aura is focused through a laid-back West Coast 70’s lens, injecting Amos’ wry wit and tinges of darkness into lush songs that drift like dreamy, featherlight clouds. American mythos and folk tales of forewarning underpin Amos’ lyricism while his compositions draw on the essence of gentler eras of rock, creating a distinct tension, like dark clouds encroaching on a coastline sunset.