Tokyo’s She Talks Silence expanded into a trio this year, but new track “Holy Hands, Holy Voices” reveals that loneliness remains at the core of this band’s sound. “Holy Hands” doesn’t change up the style She Talks Silence used to craft some of this blog’s favorite songs of the past few years, but rather amplifies it ever so slightly. The guitars are buzzier, slightly more feedback than usual coming out of the speakers during stretches of this song. As Ian Martin notes in his take on this song, there are instances where it sounds like She Talks Silence are about to spill into a guitar solo. Yet underneath all of those cutting noises is Minami Yamaguchi’s voice, a very pretty source of sound but also made to sound tiny against the music, like it’s lost and trying to find a way out of all the cacophony. There are moments where she sounds on the verge of getting out of it, of some sort of transcendence has her voice tries to hit notes she has rarely braved before. Yet, critically, she always gets pulled back in, one glimmering guitar that peaks in later in the song summing up the melancholy of “Holy Hands.” Listen above.
