Hailing from Gothenburg, Sweden,
Hollow Ship
are a psych-rock combo with a progressive edge and a penchant for big, ferocious grooves. The project stems from a collaboration between bandleader
Thomas Frank
(vocals, guitar) and
Vincent Vensal
(guitar) whose loose improvisations came to life over a two-year period with the addition of an agile rhythm battery in bassist
Johannes Cronquist
and drummer
Marten Magnefors
. On their debut album,
Future Remains
, the group invests in the exploratory spirit of psych, jam, prog, and art-rock without necessarily bowing to each tradition's expected tropes. In fact, their bold, rhythm-heavy attack and warped fusion of contemporary and vintage studio manipulations comes across as quite modern in approach. With its distorted kalimbas and massive tape-delayed drum hits, opener "We Were Kings" rolls through raucous layers of Afro-pop and dub while closer "Take Off" incorporates a muscular hip-hop-adjacent beats, hard funk bass licks, and a shimmering top layer that all comes together in an irresistible head-bobbing jam sandwich. In between,
makes visits to the hissing pastoral fields of late-'60s acoustic psych ("Built to Last"), chunky hard rock ("In the End"), and behemoth prog romps ("Magic Mountain"), sometimes adding lyrics and sometimes just working up a rich instrumental lather. As musicians, they are all monster players who clearly gel as a live band and the whole affair is recorded with a robust, bottom-heavy analog punch that keeps the instruments on equal footing and prevents
from becoming too hairy a guitar fest. For the most part, the songwriting is strong enough to hold its own, but for
, the main attraction seems to be the bold feel of the arrangements, the musical interplay between bandmates, and the excellent production on this exciting debut. ~ Timothy Monger