Keli Holiday’s new EP, JESTERMAN, is here.
The record, which Holiday has been teasing out throughout the first half of the year, had its premiere on triple j’s Home and Hosed.
The EP marks a new chapter for Holiday, abundant with authenticity and raw ideas, and is truly genre-hopping, traversing everything from New Age disco to ’90s Britpop to alternative rock. Holiday also collaborated with notable artists for his new project, Kirin J Callinan, blackpaw, and Dante Knows.
One track, “lowdown”, explores the turbulent essence of a toxic relationship.
“‘Lowdown’ talks about the push and pull of a toxic relationship that unfortunately a lot of us know all too well,” Holiday explains. “You know it’s bad but you can’t stop. You’re just as bad as one another and love it.
“This song was born in the Beachwood Canyon bungalow with Twin Shadow and Blackpaw. We started with the bass and I riffed some spoken word. We then thought it would be a fun time trying to juxtapose the minor sections with a bright chorus that feels like sunshine through the palm trees on a pill of ecstasy. It feels like two songs in a way and I love that.”
Other tracks on JESTERMAN include “disco” and “horsepower”, the latter of which is about “a woman that takes over any room for better or worse. A woman that’ll pick you up in a Rolls Royce and drop you home in a hearse. A diamond studded Gucci top with a shotgun in her purse. Powerful, strong, scary and sexy.”
Holiday’s debut album, KELI, released in 2022, has amassed over 2 million streams, earning accolades from critics and fans alike.
Keli Holiday is the alter ego of Peking Duk’s Adam Hyde. In a 2021 interview with Tone Deaf, Hyde explained the vision behind his Keli Holiday project.
“It’s kind of like this flamboyant dude who is heartbroken from a relationship, but he’s decided to embark on his own journey through holidays,” he said at the time.
“Is it art imitating life? Is it life imitating art? Who knows? All I know is it’s a fuckin’ fun time, and I can’t wait to bring this show on the road again because the live show really, really encapsulates all that is Keli Holiday, and I feel once you can see it in the flesh then you can kind of get a feel for it more.”
Keli Holiday’s JESTERMAN EP is out now.
