Ekko Astral have become one of our favorite new bands since releasing their debut LP pink balloons on Topshelf Records this past April, and now they’ve followed that great album up with a standalone track, “Holocaust Remembrance Day.” It’s a powerful song that trades the band’s usual post-punk energy for bare-bones acoustic guitar, and proceeds from the Bandcamp-exclusive song will go to “directly to GoFundMes for families fleeing an onslaught of Israeli military violence.” Here’s what vocalist Jael Holzman says about the song’s multi-layered message:
This song reflects three experiences key to my life as an American Jew. The first verse is about a time I was asked by a police officer in the U.S. Capitol building if I was a Muslim because of my Tichel. The third verse is about when Liam and I produced a podcast for our university’s Hillel about how Jewish students felt about Israel but were censored and disallowed from having any critical voices. And the cover is the site of a 1994 massacre of Palestinians during Ramadan at a holy site to both Jews and Muslims, the Cave of the Patriarchs. I visited this site during a monthlong trip to Israel in high school with a Jewish youth group. That trip also included military humvees, attempts at recruiting me and my fellow high school-aged Jews to the IDF, and lectures about how the Dome of the Rock was a reason to hold hate in our hearts for Arab Muslim people.
Criticizing the Israeli state for the violence it perpetrates against the Palestinian people is not antisemetic. I say that as someone whose family has stayed in kibbutzim just like those targeted on Oct. 7. The truth is there is more than one kind of Jew, and questioning what people tell you is a central Jewish moral. But the city I live in, Washington DC, definitely doesn’t talk about it that way very often. I’ve been struck by the hypocrisy of some news outlets talking about detained reporters in Russia, but there has been no bleeding heart for all the journalists being carried out on stretchers dead in Gaza. Where was the Dana Bash CNN segment about the Al-Jazeera reporter who was shot dead by the IDF multiple years ago? We don’t see that anywhere.
Download it at Bandcamp (name your price) and listen below. Read our ‘Artist to Watch’ interview with Ekko Astral in the new issue of the BrooklynVegan digital magazine.
https://twitter.com/jholz__/status/1801283336595276286
Ekko Astral — 2024 Tour Dates
June 19 Asbury park NJ – The Stone Pony*
june 20 Washington dc – 930 Club*
june 21 philadelphia pa – Union Transfer*
june 22 boston ma – Paradise Rock Club*
june 23 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw *
July 19 – Brooklyn, NY – The Sultan Room **
July 22 – Philly – Kung Fu Necktie **
Aug 12 Pittsburgh pa – Club Cafe
Aug 13 Columbus oh – Ace Of Cups
Aug 14 Indianapolis in – Healer
Aug 15 Chicago il – Gman Tavern
Aug 17 Detroit mi – Sanctuary Detroit
Aug 18 Cleveland oh – Foundry
* w/ Ted Leo
** w/ Lambrini Girls