★★★★★
Nostalgia usually runs in 20-year cycles, but the modest popularity of acts like Empire of the Sun and Holy Ghost! shows that we're not quite ready to shake off our fascination with the decade of excess. While the synthpop of the '80s built their sound upon pre-existing building blocks of pop (how else would they have done it?), acts like Holy Ghost! write their songs as if the genres of techno or disco sprouted out of the ground with no subterfuge...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-11-05
★★★★★
Ever since LCD Soundsystem disbanded in 2011, there's been a void in the synth pop world. Cut Copy is a little too obsessed with '70s disco (in a good way), Daft Punk decided to take a wonderful left turn to analog sounds, and plenty of other bands copping New Order synths and bass lines have come and gone. But no one has grooved like LCD did. So into this void comes Holy Ghost...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2013-10-18
★★★★★
It will certainly make you dance. That's the first, and most important thing that needs to be said about Holy Ghost!'s new album. On their sophomore LP, the Brooklyn duo reinforces their synth-pop direction and exhibits obvious throwback elements of Italo-disco and '80s dance music. Influences from classics like Depeche Mode and New Order are blatant throughout the record, simultaneously making it a party essential while diminishing its validity in terms of originality...
- www.cmj.com
2013-10-12
★★★★★
When indie-disco duo Holy Ghost! released their debut LP in 2011, they were widely dismissed as late-comers to the party. James Murphy had just called time on LCD Soundsystem and the glory days of DFA's dance-punk reign were over. Holy Ghost! was well-received, but it was clear that whatever their talents, they weren't going to revive the scene alone. Two years on, Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel have sorted out their timing...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-10-09
★★★★★
Holy Ghost! have an innate ability to craft pop songs that on first listen can seem frankly unspectacular. These songs slowly creep into the subconscious and latch onto your brain, refusing to let go. Dynamics is the second album for the duo consisting of Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel and it continues this trend. When the duo first emerged they spent a lot of time cutting their teeth on remixes for heavy hitters like MGMT, LCD Soundsystem and Moby...
- www.theaureview.com
2013-10-03
★★★★★
Not to alarm anyone, but there is something of a hole in the music scene here - although the aperture is in synthpop/nu-disco/inditronica/alternative dance, all genres with far too many hyphens and modifiers and, seriously, with so many backslashes, how could one take alarm at this? - and, while it appears relatively small and fresh for now, one is always concerned with figuring out what is going to plug said hole, as soon as possible (knowing as soon as possible, preferably before others, is...
- thelineofbestfit.com
2013-10-04
★★★★★
?????????? Lifelong friends and native New Yorkers Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser have been kicking around the indie dance-pop scene for a few years now. Long enough to earn some rave reviews for their previous work, 2010's Static on the Wire EP and 2011's self-titled full-length, but due to their still relatively youthful ages, not long enough to have actually experienced firsthand the sweeping '80's disco scene they've mined as part of their own sound...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2013-09-29
★★★★★
It's been a surprisingly short time - only two and a half years - since Holy Ghost! released their debut LP. Or at least it seems like a short time when compared to the drawn out period spanning their first single, EP and album. Admittedly this was during their formative years, just after emerging from their previous incarnation as hip-hop duo Automato and were cultivating a new sound, learning their trade and unearthing their penchant for Italo influenced synth-pop...
- www.state.ie
2013-09-20
★★★★★
As the progenitors of last decade's indie-dance boom hit their "Now what?" years, the definition for musical maturation stands to get a bit confused. Music that nods to a previous generation's styles also faces the pitfall of knowing how those styles ossified when their listenership aged-- a combination of more self-awareness and more conscious grabs for half-comfortable adaptation-- and artists are trying even more stringently to avoid it. Holy Ghost...
- pitchfork.com
2013-09-18
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