Holy Profane
Holy Profane is the solo project of Detroit-based musician Anthony Zito. Alongside co-fronting the garage rock outfit Spacecadet, running DIY spaces, and contributing instrumentally to projects including Bombastic Dream Pussy, Ship and Sail, and the Sonic Underground Creative Collective (S.U.C.C.), Zito has been releasing his own home-recorded projects under the Holy Profane moniker for the better part of a decade. Sonically, the project covers homespun psychedelia (2019's Go Blind in the Quest For Perfect Eyesight), blown-out garage rock (2016's Outlive Yourself), and spacey instrumental guitar explorations (2011's Stand Steady Stand Straight Sunken Spirit).
2021's Jettison Yr Dreams finds Zito stripping his sound back to vocals and acoustic guitar, allowing his vivid storytelling and lyricism to take center stage. Recorded at home over the course of 2020, the album is a far cry from the cliched "pandemic record." Instead, Zito connects the dots between childhood memories and present-day experience, explores the duality of being an artist and a worker, and seeks to find meaning and direction in a late-capitalist hellscape of corrupt local officials, music scene social politics, and pervasive targeted advertising. Working in the tradition of artists such as Jeff Mangum, Conor Oberst, and the Mountain Goats, Zito forges his own path forward when folk-punk idealism fails to live up to its promises.
