Praises - In This Year: Hierophant (2022) Hi-Res

Praises returns with a full band and their second studio album, In This Year: Hierophant. Through instinct, talent and of course, blind luck, Praises harnessed their sound through the course of the pandemic, leaning into the creative spirit and a recording process reminiscent of a Bad Seeds project, key players wrote their parts from only a demo track and a feeling. The result pushes beyond their industrial synth-based offerings, incorporating the intensity of their highly regarded live performances with an intimate, collaborative and distanced songwriting process.

Every new year Crowe draws a tarot card to represent what is to come, shaping the character of the coming album and its title. On In This Year: Hierophant, Praises delves deeper into a world of hypnotic vocals, textured synths and arrangements to transcendent effect. This album expands Praises' sonic palette stylistically and lyrically, exploring themes of human reckoning and hope. Over the course of four EPs and two albums, Crowe's influences have been dark and theatrical, moving through the hum of Rachel Goswell's shoegazing, the drive of Patti Smith's poetic delivery, blending the art-gloom of Beth Gibbons' sultry jazz with Annie Lennox' avant-gardism found on a "Night Full of Tension" and "Sweet Surprise." A unique mixing which "makes Praises' dark nights of the soul feel hypnotic, carving out territory between Bat for Lashes and Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree."