The Holy Soviets

Over two years before they ever wrote a single song, George Ednie (In a some what altered state) wrote the words "The Holy Soviets" on Jesse Grayer's sock in magic marker while he was trying to go to sleep around 5PM. Immediatly it became clear that this was going to be the name of their band, replacing the previous suggestion of Bitchless Jesse & The Spitichcocks. George moved from their homeland of Long Island, New York to Great Yarmouth in England. They spent the next couple years doing nothing but listening to music and figuring out how to write songs like The Beatles (anything less simply wouldn't do). The Soviets struggled with this huge bar they had set for themself until they had a spark with a song George had half written that would eventually come be titled Spilt Milk Blues. In a studio Jesse had built in his garage, they set about writting and recording with the idea of making a song as commercial as possible while also sounding in every possible way like nothing anyone had ever heard before. The Holy Soviets had found their sound in this process by using incredable attention to detail, new ways of recording sounds acoustically, and a perfect relationship of psychedelic and original instrumentation with pop song writting. The Soviets have very wide influences. Though they are most rooted in The Beatles (George knows more about The Beatles than your average biographer and when he was still in the womb his parents would play him The Beatles through headphones they put on his mother's stomach.) they get much of their sound from Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Silverchair, The White Stripes, Jimmy Eat World, Roky Erickson, Pink Floyd, Queen, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector and Joe Meek. As a two piece band, they are capable of proforming to any kind of audience and and on the spot improvisations. They never play with a setlist so they can let their shows run free and stay exciting. Infact, many of their favorite songs were born out of live improvisations. What really makes The Holy Soviets work is their fear of being upstaged... of not being the best... if The Holy Soviets can't be perfect, they don't want to exist at all.