Holly Mae And The Painted Room did something extremely brave at their last show at the very end of March; they stepped up to their respective mics and delivered a completely re-constructed set of their songs taking those among the audience familiar with their material totally by surprise. Losing the folk stylings for a more restrained, yet intense, electric guitar, Holly Mae and her girls, sisters Kathy and Sara Kwon on keyboards and bass respectively, hushed a packed room with their unforgettable performance. These girls are on a journey into unmapped territory and abide by no rules hitherto laid down by your, my or anybody elses expectations of what they should do next. Witness it now.
Holly Mae & the Painted Room is a collaboration of three lost Californian girls who stumbled across a portal into a hidden space when they started making music together in Berlin. Songs are drafted by folk-rooted writer Holly Mae Haddock. Sisters Kathy and Sara Kwon work with Holly Mae to expose fragile and somber melodies and to find ephemeral shapes amid florid harmonies and idiosyncratic instrumentation. Holly Mae’s lyrics echo myth and tragedy, children’s stories, outsider art, and popular science. Invocations and incantations both, Painted Room songs invite listeners into magical realms to see conjured and remembered forms.
