HOLEY WATER, by Thelma and The Sleaze

HOLEY WATER

by Thelma and The Sleaze

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Full Digital Discography

16

releases

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of HOLEY WATER LIVE!, HOLEY WATER, Music As Sport, FUCK MARRY KILL, OH Girl w/ Heaven Honey, Sacred As Hell, Martxa Baten Lehen Notak By Cootchie Cootchie, Mid American Drift EP 2016, and 8 more. , and , .

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1.	BLACK CAR 01:59	buy track
2.	ON THE LINE 02:35	buy track
3.	STAY 03:13	buy track
4.	LONG TIME 02:41	buy track
5.	FASTER 05:01	buy track
6.	LEATHER NITES 06:47	buy track
7.	HANDS TIED 04:39	buy track
8.	EASY 06:15	buy track
9.	SUSPECT 04:33	buy track
10.	VULTURE DOG 05:37	buy track

about

Touring consistently since 2011, Thelma and the Sleaze (T.A.T.S.) has been honing their sound, presentation, crowd work, and artistic perspective for over a decade. The knowledge and experience they have gained from those thousands of hours on stage, and tens of thousands more miles in a van on the road, has finally arrived on record, fully formed. Their best recorded effort to date, Holey Water is an expression of what was always possible for T.A.T.S. if the Fates would afford them the alchemical pairing of enough time off from the slog of constant touring, and an expansion of resources in the form of even more talented players and a bigger budget.

After a year of pandemic isolation, LG (T.A.T.S. vocals, guitar, primary songwriter, and overall band leader) got her sea legs back after quarantine by gathering her first-call collaborators in the studio. Together they dug into the many home demos LG had amassed during quarantining alone in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Holey Water is the third studio album from T.A.T.S. It’s sonic quilting is a well-worn tapestry of popular music, and deserves to be filed in the “Ride-Or-Die Sisterhood” chapter of the great American songbook, near The Go-Gos’ Beauty And The Beat and Fanny’s Fanny Hill. This album is rock and roll. It acknowledges what has always worked within the cannon, and what needn’t continue for its survival. It showcases a wide-range of musical references from the public domain of rock and roll thought, and each are just right:

Track 1, “Black Car,” uses the shiny-synth-in-sync-with-crunchy-lead guitar sound that defined 1980s era punk. Track 2, “On The Line,” adopts the streetwise and romantic delivery of the Shangri-Las. Track 3, “Stay,” features that Benjamin Bossi horn sound that cuts through every Romeo Void song. Track 4, “Long Time,” gives us a modern take on Martha Davis’ boogie-woogie pianoing. Track 5, “Faster,” holds a mirror up to the entire melodramatic history of the Jim Steinman repertoire. Track 6, “Leather Nights,” seduces in the same scary-sexy cadence of early-1990s Nine Inch Nails BDSM. Track 7, “Hands Tied,” showcases Robert Smith-like vocals; tender and strangled with desire and sadness. Track 8, “Easy,” is a progressive solo interpolating somewhere between late-1960s Focus and Santana. Track 9, “Suspect,” successfully holds space for both first-album Peaches drum machining, and the atmosphere of Brian Eno. Track 10, “Vulture Dog,” is full of heavy, atonal riffing, staccato drumming, and all the lyrical grandstanding that have come to define much of T.A.T.S. style and sound over their career.

T.A.T.S. is well-studied, and so well-positioned to remain at the helm of rock and roll relevancy. Having emerged from the fringes of a vacuous, toxically masculine void of excess that opened for rock music’s death knell decades ago - T.A.T.S. are rock visionaries. Their songs are unabashedly queer; raging, and provocative, yet tender, reflective, and vulnerable.

credits

released September 1, 2023

The album was recorded across two separate sessions from May 2021 to May 2022 in Water Valley, Mississippi at Dial Back Sound. Thelma and The Sleaze co-produced the record with Robert Patton and Bronson Trew. Trew also served as head engineer, and was assisted by Shaeffer Llanna. Other personnel included: Bailey “Pigpen” Chapmen (drums, background vocals), Heather “Big Show” Gillis (bass, background vocals), Amaia Aguirre (keys, background vocals), Helen Gilley (background vocals), Susan Lee (background vocals), Henry Westmoreland (saxophone), and Robert Patton (bass).

license

about

Thelma and The Sleaze Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville, TN Est 2010

thelmaandthesleaze.com

shows

May 14

Neighborhood Theatre

Charlotte, NC
May 15

The Earl

East Atlanta, GA
May 17

Eulogy

Asheville, NC
May 31

Rose Music Hall

Columbia, MO
Jun 6

Hi-Dive

Denver, CO
Jun 11

The District

Spokane, WA
Jun 14

Belltown Yacht Club

Seattle, WA
Jun 15

Belltown Yacht Club

Seattle, WA
Jun 18

Moe's Alley

Santa Cruz, CA
Jun 21

Permanent Records Roadhouse

Los Angeles (LA), CA
Jun 24

Sister

Albuquerque, NM

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