Playing off a band’s name is one of the lamest of music journalism ploys, even if we do live in a day and age where band names are almost as disposable as the lyrics they pen. (If someone named Jimmy ever eats a world, chances are you’ll hear about it on the evening news.)

Her Space Holiday, on the other hand, make a good vacation for those who want a little symphony and sympathy with their electronica.

Early album titles such as Short Films and The Astronauts Are Sleeping are instructive in hinting at the band’s atmospheric beginnings, long before their arrival at the symphonic electronica of their last two efforts, including their latest, Young Machines, an album oiled with a lyrical honesty that surpasses its gold record-selling contemporaries of danceable beats and disposable lyrics.

Touching upon infidelity and ultimately hypocrisy, Marc Bianci offers a tongue full of sympathy and a little advice on covering one's tracks in ‘My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend: “suck on my fingertips until you kill all my prints, so your boyfriend has no clue how much I’ve been touching you.”

And HSH is indeed touching in places, as with “Sleepy California,” a song showing Bianci not only as man with girl troubles but as a son trying to make peace with his mom, a peace that’s punctuated with thoughtful strings that add a melancholy that’s both majestic and uplifting.

Electronica and catharsis can co-exist; Her Space Holiday proves this and sets the standard for laptops and the lower occipital firing at full capacity. Anybody’s cat could walk over a laptop and the result might be interesting. Her Space Holiday’s Bianchi evokes feeling without leaning on cliché using sounds as varied as a loop of toy piano or a burst of crunching guitar to drive the point home.

Once tourmates of established acts including Bob Mould and Bright Eyes, Her Space Holiday has carved out a niche in literate electronica, providing fodder for the heart and a five-course dinner for the ears. Saturday’s show will leave you wondering why Sub Pop hasn’t picked up HSH and made them up to capitalize and improve upon the ground already won by songwriters with electronic bands.

The metaphor is mixed, the results are not: this is one holiday that deserves to be celebrated. (0) Comments