Coming out of Sweden, Holiday For Strings line up in the crowd of post rock bands playing decent music, but not quite reaching the level of their peers. The debut release by Holiday For Strings has been very well recorded and the mastering courtesy of Canada?s Harris Newman adds the necessary clarity to it. What is missing on the disc is the certain edge that would set it apart from the large mass of post rock releases ready to be chosen by the music hungry listenership.

At points, Holiday For Strings sound like Trans Am, at other points they sound like The Sea and Cake and at yet other points they sound like other bands from Chicago and other cities. Next to this lack of originality, Holiday For Strings also do not always succeed at keeping the tension in their songs. While ?I Got Two Hands? stays fairly tight throughout its 5 minutes and displays a nice development, other songs lose themselves in aimless noodling after a certain time. Another not so successful aspect of Holiday For Strings is the addition of some sort of epilogue at the end of each piece that does not have any apparent connection to the rest of the respective song. Despite having some decidedly bright moments, the debut album by Holiday For Strings is just too eventless to really hit the mark. 5/10 -- Stephan Bauer (11 December, 2006)