Rival Sons guitarist, songwriter and founding member Scott Holiday is stepping into completely new territory with HOL1D4Y, an intensely personal solo project that sees him taking full creative control — and, for the first time in his career, stepping behind the microphone as lead vocalist.
After years spent helping build Rival Sons into one of modern rock’s most distinctive bands, Scott Holiday is opening the door to another side of his creativity.
His new project, HOL1D4Y, centres around Topology — music written, recorded and self-produced in Holiday’s own home studio, free from outside expectations and able to follow whatever strange musical path felt right.
Psychedelia?
Absolutely.
Alternative music?
Yep.
Progressive exploration?
Plenty.
Experimental pop?
That too.
But underneath all of that experimentation sits something much more personal.
As Holiday puts it:
“Topology explores the hidden geometry of the heart.”
And the road towards the project took an unexpectedly brutal turn before the music was finished.
🚲 A Serious Bike Crash Changed Everything
At the end of last year, Holiday’s world suddenly stopped.
Just minutes away from home, he was riding his bike back after spending an evening with friends when he was struck by a car.
He has no memory of the collision itself.
The crash left him with six broken ribs, a shoulder injury and a head injury, beginning a recovery period lasting months.
For someone used to making music, travelling and constantly creating, suddenly being unable to move normally must have been a dramatic shift.
But while his body was forced to stop, his imagination apparently wasn’t interested in doing the same.
The unfinished music remained in his head.
And gradually, the project began changing shape.
🎶 The Instrumentals Started Asking For Words
Some of the material that became Topology had initially existed as instrumental compositions.
That makes perfect sense considering Holiday’s career.
He’s spent years developing an instantly recognisable guitar identity — fuzzy, psychedelic, bluesy, experimental and frequently sounding like his pedalboard has gained consciousness.
But during his recovery, several pieces started feeling incomplete without something else.
Words.
Stories.
A voice.
Holiday explains:
“What surprised me was that they stopped feeling like instrumental pieces. They seemed prepped for a story. Once I realized that, the words came quickly. That’s when I knew it was time to step into this new role — I needed to be the one to tell these stories.”
And that realisation led to perhaps the biggest departure of the entire project.
🎤 Scott Holiday Is Singing
For the first time in his recording career, Holiday is taking the lead vocal role on his own material.
That alone makes HOL1D4Y fascinating.
For years, fans have known him primarily as the hat-wearing guitar wizard standing alongside Jay Buchanan in Rival Sons, creating some of the most distinctive guitar textures in modern blues-rock.
HOL1D4Y puts him somewhere very different.
Front and centre.
Not simply writing the music.
Not simply producing it.
Not simply building the soundscape.
Telling the story himself.
Importantly, Holiday doesn’t seem to view singing as some dramatic attempt at reinvention.
Instead, it sounds more like discovering another part of his musical identity that simply hadn’t found the correct home before now.
HOL1D4Y became that home.
🌌 Complete Creative Independence
There’s another major difference between HOL1D4Y and Holiday’s work within a traditional band environment.
This time, everything could follow his own internal compass.
The material was recorded and self-produced in his home studio, allowing Holiday to develop the songs without needing them to satisfy the expectations of a particular genre, record-making process or established band identity.
And that freedom seems central to Topology.
Rather than asking:
“Does this sound like something I’m supposed to make?”
the project appears to ask:
“What does this particular piece of music actually need?”
That distinction can lead musicians into some very interesting places.
🌀 So What Does HOL1D4Y Sound Like?
Trying to squeeze Topology neatly into one genre probably misses the point.
The project occupies the territory where psychedelic atmosphere, alternative music, progressive ideas and experimental pop begin bleeding into one another.
That sounds particularly well suited to Holiday.
Even within Rival Sons, he has never felt like a guitarist interested solely in traditional blues-rock vocabulary.
His playing regularly wanders into strange textures.
Fuzz.
Effects.
Unusual tones.
Psychedelic colours.
Sounds that sometimes feel closer to manipulated studio noise than a conventional electric guitar.
HOL1D4Y gives that experimental instinct an entire project to play with.
No fence required.
🎨 The Visual World Matters Too
And apparently the musical rabbit hole wasn’t enough.
HOL1D4Y has developed a strong visual identity alongside the music.
Given Holiday’s obvious love of psychedelic imagery, that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.
If your music is exploring consciousness, perception and transformation, wrapping everything inside some beige promotional photography would feel like a massive missed opportunity.
Instead, Topology appears designed as a broader creative world.
Music and imagery feeding into one another.
Colours.
Shapes.
Psychedelia.
Surrealism.
The kind of artwork that may make considerably more sense after staring at it for six minutes.
Or considerably less.
Either works.
🧠 Perception, Consciousness And Transformation
The themes running through Topology are every bit as ambitious as the musical palette.
Holiday is exploring perception, consciousness and transformation — subjects that naturally fit the project’s psychedelic character.
And after the bike accident, the idea of transformation suddenly carries additional weight.
This isn’t simply abstract philosophy.
Holiday experienced an event that instantly changed his physical reality.
One minute he was cycling home.
The next period of his life became months of recovery from injuries he had no memory of receiving.
Experiences like that can radically alter the way somebody thinks about time, vulnerability and creativity.
You don’t need to turn the accident into some neat inspirational narrative to recognise that it inevitably became part of the circumstances surrounding the music.
Topology continued developing while everything else had temporarily stopped.
🎸 Scott Holiday Has Always Been A Different Kind Of Guitar Hero
Rival Sons fans already know Holiday doesn’t approach guitar like somebody desperately trying to win a technical competition.
His strength has always been character.
You know when he’s playing.
There’s grit.
Space.
Huge fuzz tones.
Blues influence.
Psychedelia.
And a willingness to make the guitar sound slightly broken if that’s what the song needs.
That approach helped give Rival Sons records such as Pressure & Time, Head Down, Great Western Valkyrie, Feral Roots and beyond their distinctive personality.
HOL1D4Y now gives him the opportunity to take that creative instinct somewhere completely unrestricted.
🔥 This Isn’t Rival Sons II
And that’s important.
A solo project becomes considerably less interesting if it simply sounds like somebody’s main band with different names on the credits.
HOL1D4Y appears to exist specifically because Holiday had music that wanted to become something else.
There will inevitably be traces of the musician people recognise.
That guitar vocabulary doesn’t suddenly disappear.
But Topology sounds conceived as its own creative environment, rather than material squeezed into the Rival Sons mould.
That’s exactly what a solo project should be.
A chance to go somewhere your main band doesn’t naturally need to go.
🎙️ Hearing Holiday’s Voice Changes The Relationship
The decision to sing the material himself might ultimately be the defining element.
Vocals make music incredibly personal.
A guitarist can create emotion through an instrument, obviously.
But once you’re singing your own words, there’s nowhere near as much distance between the creator and the story.
Holiday says he realised:
“I needed to be the one to tell these stories.”
That’s a powerful reason to step behind a microphone.
Not because somebody told him he should become a frontman.
Because the material itself apparently demanded it.
🖤 Music Created During Recovery
There’s something particularly compelling about the way Topology developed during Holiday’s recovery.
He couldn’t physically continue in the usual way.
But internally, the songs kept moving.
Arrangements continued forming.
Ideas developed.
Instrumental pieces began acquiring narratives.
And eventually those narratives required lyrics.
It’s almost as though the project evolved while its creator was temporarily forced into stillness.
For musicians who spend their lives surrounded by schedules, studios, rehearsals and touring, being physically forced to stop can create an unusual amount of mental space.
Sometimes uncomfortable space.
Sometimes productive space.
In Holiday’s case, it helped reveal what the project needed to become.
🌠 ‘The Hidden Geometry Of The Heart’
And then we return to that phrase.
“Topology explores the hidden geometry of the heart.”
Topology, in mathematical terms, concerns relationships between shapes and spaces that remain through transformation.
Apply that idea emotionally and suddenly the album title becomes rather clever.
How do people change while something essential remains?
What shape does experience leave behind?
How do relationships, trauma, memory and perception alter the internal map?
That’s fairly heavy territory.
Even without a single downtuned guitar.
🤘 THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT
HOL1D4Y feels like exactly the sort of solo project we want from an established musician.
Not:
“Here’s more of what you already know.”
But:
“Here’s the part of me you haven’t heard yet.”
Scott Holiday has spent years establishing himself as one of modern rock’s most distinctive guitarists.
With Topology, he’s removing the boundaries.
He wrote it.
Recorded it.
Produced it.
Built the visual world around it.
And now, for the first time, he’s singing it too.
The serious bike accident that interrupted his life could easily have stopped the project completely.
Instead, while his body recovered, the music continued evolving in his head until instrumental ideas became stories demanding a voice.
And Holiday decided that voice had to be his.
That makes Topology more than a Rival Sons guitarist stretching his legs between albums.
It sounds like a genuine creative step into unfamiliar territory.
Psychedelic, personal, experimental and entirely his own — HOL1D4Y has officially arrived. 🎸🌌🔥
