Q&A: Eric Cannata's Solo Debut ‘Holding Onto the Holy’ is a Journey of Solitude and Introspection

MusicQ&A

Jan 10

INTERVIEW

CAPTURING THE POWER OF LOVE IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD — Eric Cannata, guitarist of indie-rock band Young the Giant, has ventured into new sonic territories with the release of his full-length solo debut, Holding Onto the Holy. Cannata steps into the limelight on his own, with an album that explores love, solitude, and the intricate beauty of human connection amidst the chaos of the world.

Each song on the album feels like a conversation with oneself, an intimate exploration of what it means to love and be loved while navigating personal and collective chaos. The tracks explore themes of vulnerability, miscommunication, and the yearning for connection that often comes with relationships—subjects that are as universal as they are deeply personal to Cannata. It’s in these moments of solitude that he found the space to create, to rediscover his voice, and to express a love that is as pure and raw as it is transformative.

The album’s journey began with the release of four singles, each providing a glimpse into the creative landscape that Cannata cultivated while navigating a period of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Wave” and “There You Go Again” served as the first sonic windows into the album, while “Like You Do” and the newly released “Fruit” single are poised to bloom soon. Each of these singles is accompanied by an official video, directed by filmmaker Taylor Thompson, whose work beautifully complements the dreamy, surreal tone of Cannata’s compositions.

Cannata shares that “There You Go Again” was the catalyst for the entire album, sparking a period of intense creative exploration.

“It opened up the writing for Holding Onto the Holy,” Cannata reveals. “It kicked off a period of musical exploration in solitude, seeing what came naturally when I was in my home studio without any agenda, just enjoying the process of creativity.” This process, born from a moment of personal reflection, gave birth to a unique blend of vintage instrumentation, including Cannata’s Fender Coronado guitar, a jangly upright piano, and the warm, atmospheric sounds of a Solina String Ensemble synthesizer. Inspired by the grandiosity of 60s Wall of Sound production, the track exudes a sense of freedom, as Cannata dances through his studio, singing into an old microphone drenched in spring reverb.

The accompanying video for “There You Go Again,” directed by Thompson, mirrors this sense of longing and liberation. Set in an old canyon home, the surrealist visuals of missed connections and miscommunication echo the track’s lyrical themes of the ebb and flow of profound love. It’s a striking visual metaphor for the vulnerability and desire to connect that Cannata captures through his music.

At the heart of Holding Onto the Holy is Cannata’s relationship with his wife and central inspiration Hannah Connolly. This album is a celebration of love—both for others and oneself—and explores how to hold on to joy amidst the turbulence of the world. “The album had its genesis during ten days of Covid quarantine,” Cannata shares. “It was a time when I was forced to reflect on what was really important, using a scratchy throat and an old microphone to find a new voice.”

Musically, Holding Onto the Holy is a vibrant indie-rock and power pop collection. It navigates the complexities of togetherness, love, and the human experience, while also embracing the joy of life despite its inherent struggles. Cannata’s approach to songwriting here is intimate, yet expansive—his melodies are infectious, and his lyrics are full of both personal reflection and universal appeal. Each track feels like an invitation into his world, an exploration of emotions that are at once deeply personal and widely relatable.

In the spirit of those who embrace their creativity in solitude and then share it with the world, Cannata’s Holding Onto the Holy proves to be a stunning solo effort. While the album may have started as a search for joy in a chaotic world, it ultimately became a celebration of finding peace and freedom within oneself—and then dancing joyfully through life, no matter the uncertainties ahead.

LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?

ERIC: For this solo record that I did, I would say musically, I was listening to a lot of older music. A lot of 60s and 70s, Velvet Underground, Harry Nilsson, Roy Orbison, trying to explore different singing voices. Outside of music, I love art. I love nature. I was really inspired by the impermanence of everything, and just the imperfections in everything and trying to capture the human quality. As the world gets more and more inundated with technology, I think I've gravitated, at least for this record, more into the older stuff, the tangible, and things that are imperfect and worn in.

LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?

ERIC: When I was writing and recording the album, I was coming at the process in a way that was not trying to force anything, just trying to be natural with it and enjoy the process of creativity. I think when people listen to the record, for the people who do listen to the record, I hope that they get that feeling of joy out of the creative process and feel inspired to be creative themselves. I think just a general sense of wonder or curiosity would be a good feeling or emotion that I would like to evoke.

LUNA: What inspires you to push boundaries within your sound? Are there any specific experiences, artists, or moments that have encouraged you to explore new musical territories?

ERIC: The touring and the time I've spent in studios over the years working on my own music, working with my band Young the Giant, working with other artists, I feel like I've just realized that I love to not necessarily just be a yes man, but I love to explore all the options. If an idea comes to someone's head, or if an idea comes to my head for this album, I just wanted to roll with it and get into a flow state of trying things and listening back and seeing if they felt instinctively right or wrong. I would say that just the experience from being in studios over the years and wanting to really keep an open mind, and then also traveling for work, being in different cities, meeting new people and eating different food, and just trying to keep a general sense of openness to the process and exploration in general.

LUNA: Holding Onto the Holy is your full-length solo debut and huge congratulations are in order. Can you share the journey that led you to create this album, and what themes or emotions do you explore?

ERIC: So for this particular album, I had been writing and recording music for a while now, and with this record, I had a chance to slow down and be by myself for a little bit. My wife and I rented a house here in LA which had a garage in the back, which I turned into a studio, and I would just sit there for hours, sometimes staring off into space, sometimes playing the piano, sometimes the guitar, drums, and just exploring sounds. I really wanted to create on my own. I do a lot of collaborating, which I absolutely love within my band and with other artists, but I do have a love for this being alone and spending time alone and going inward. I think that for this album, it was a lot of time to spend alone, talking to myself and exploring different sounds. I think that what came out of it was the realization that I'm really for myself, wanting little reminders to slow down and refocus my energy on my wife, my family, my friends and my love for nature and love for connection. I spend so much time disconnected from those things. I think that with this record, I noticed after writing and recording it, that a lot of the songs were reminders to myself to say, ‘hey, refocus your energy.’ Listening back to the songs, some of these songs are reminders. The idea behind Holding Onto the Holy, the overall theme dives into that desire to be present and focus on the things that you know are good and meaningful in my life while the world is seemingly falling apart.

LUNA: Do you have any rituals or regimens that you do to get in that relaxed flow state to help you unlock or work through the creative process? What does that look like for you?

ERIC: I love to do deep breathing. I find that the head space that I'm in is really important, whether it's in the studio by myself, in the studio with others or performing really anywhere. When I was making this record, I spent a lot of time by myself and I was allowing myself to be bored. I think that's an important thing for me, is allowing myself to be bored. It's easier said than done, because I feel like our lives get so busy and we have so many things on the to do list. The pandemic allowed for artists to have some time to sit and be bored. I think that boredom can lead to exploring the creative process in a way that isn't agenda or goal focused, and more so exploratory and fun and joyful. Let's just try this weird guitar loop, ambient thing, and then let me layer things until I get inspired and try things without judgment. When I was starting out, I always felt like it's got to be great, right? The song I write today has got to be great. The idea has got to be great. I think that over time, realizing that so much more of what I'm doing is practice and learning and exploring, and that something great pops up here and there, rather than just waiting around and trying to make something great off the bat. I think it's allowing yourself to be bored and allowing yourself to make something that isn't great, and maybe that turns into the bridge of another song.

LUNA: I would love to talk more about the creative process behind Holding Onto the Holy. Can you walk us through a typical writing and recording session for the album?

ERIC: For this solo album, the writing process, a lot of it was me sitting around surrounded by my instruments and my recording gear and just tinkering and throwing paint at the wall and really just trying different iterations of sounds together and chord progressions, and really just exploring within myself. It was a lot of talking to myself, dabbling, tinkering on the piano, playing a little guitar here and there, playing drums, and essentially building up one by one, instrument by instrument, building up a some sort of foreground for me to then get inspired to sing and write lyrics over. There's a lot of alone time, a lot of talking to myself, a lot of dancing around with a microphone in my hand and really just having fun. Spending a lot of time alone and enjoying that solitude.

From there, I was able to bring in some really close people to me, including my wife, Hannah, who came in and helped write a couple lyrics for two of the songs. My father, Ernie, who I grew up playing piano with my entire life, came up and spent a couple days in the garage recording piano on a few songs. My dear friend, Jon O'Brien, who is an amazing producer and engineer, who has a recording studio out in Idyllwild, California, he suggested having another drummer come up and I would recut my bass parts with the drummer. Me and Jon heard this drummer named Costa, an amazing drummer from LA. We had Costa come up, and in two days, we cut the entire record, all the drums and the bass over the recordings that I had done in the garage. It was a very small, tight knit crew of people. Jon O'Brien ended up mixing the record and then Phil Shaw Bova mastered the record, so it was a very family style record, and it felt very close to home and amazing to be able to collaborate with my father for the first time. My wife, who I've collaborated with a number of times helped, and she inspired a lot of the record, the side of refocusing time and energy on the most important relationship to my life.

LUNA: What is your favorite song from Holding Onto the Holy and why do you love it? Is there a certain lyric or message that stands out to you the most?

ERIC: I have a song called “Losing Patience,” where the feeling of it feels really nonchalant, and it feels like it was created in a very relaxed energy. It's about me getting older. I am not necessarily old, but I think after years of being on the road and making records, I definitely feel the urge to slow down and settle in a little bit more and take it more easy. I was so tired while recording it that throughout the song, I yawned multiple times while singing the song. I was sitting down at the microphone, and I remember I had multiple yawns in the song. I think I only left one because it felt a little ridiculous to just keep yawning throughout the song. I love the energy of that song because of how relaxed it is. Lyrically, I'd say one of the lyrics that stands out is on another song called “Over and Over.” “When in doubt, feel the motion / You are nothing but another wave that moves across the ocean.” That song is about an anxiety attack, and it could be perceived as a drug induced anxiety attack, but essentially it's having someone you love that can really calm you down when you're having a moment of crisis or anxiety. Someone else is talking to me and realizing that we're all one part of this big universe and the Buddhist mentality. It reminds me of how I wanted to feel when I was creating the album.

LUNA: The visual aspects of an album can be as impactful as the music itself. How did collaborating with filmmaker Taylor Thompson shape the visuals for the singles? Do the videos reflect the themes of the songs, or were you aiming for something more abstract?

ERIC: That's a great question. I love the visual element of an album. I love the world building and the creative process outside of the songs. I knew one of the aspects of Holding Onto the Holy is also looking at music and looking at vinyl records and the tangibility. There’s beauty in that impermanence and the tangibility of it with films. I really wanted to shoot them on film. For “There You Go Again,” I had this idea of me in this home and this character in this home, and my wife Hannah, trying to get my attention, because the song is thematically about that disconnect and the ebb and flow within a romantic relationship. I did want to show that connectivity from the video and the song. Taylor came in with his crew and was able to direct and film it in a way that it really captured exactly what I was envisioning in my head. I think it was so cool to work with someone who has such a love for shooting on film, that he was able to do tricks with the film cameras that I had never even known about. It was so cool meeting someone with such a passion for shooting film. “The Wave,” the first video that came out, the song can literally be about this earthquake that hits and the tsunami that's there, the tidal wave that's coming to the California coast. I really wanted to be driving a vintage car and going to the coast and having the tidal wave hit, and connect it to the “There You Go Again” video where at the end of the wave, I wake up with the same flower in my hand that my wife leaves me in the first video in “There You Go Again” video. They are connected. There's a through line with the songs. Taylor Thompson really killed it.

LUNA: How has stepping into the role of a solo artist been different from your previous projects? What has been the most challenging and the most rewarding part of creating this album independently?

ERIC: I think the most challenging aspect was being the main motivator of getting it finished. I think that there's a lot that goes into writing and recording and getting everything done for an album. I think it took me almost having to talk to myself as someone else and be like, ‘okay, Eric, you have to get this, this and this done today for this song.’ It was a lot of trying to be objective and motivate myself to finish it, because I think I could have just sat on it for three years and never got it done. The most rewarding part of all of the projects that I do is that I love finishing a project and seeing it through and the release of it all.

I do think the most rewarding part for me, or the part that I get the most fulfillment out of, is actually the creative process and being in the studio and writing and recording. It really gives me so much fulfillment in life. I do feel proud of myself that I finished the album and that it showcases more sides to me than other projects I've done, in the sense that I'm singing on the record. Most of the lyrics are from my point of view. I think that feels really rewarding to have put together a full length record, mostly on my own, and then it's just so different to other projects where I'm collaborating. There's so much merit to both of them. I think they actually play off of each other, and they're really additive, where the band is such a incredible experience to be working with my bandmates I've been together with since high school, and this brotherhood that we have and making something that's bigger than one individual, whereas the solo record is really internal, diving deep into myself and doing whatever I'm feeling in the moment.

LUNA: What were some unexpected lessons you learned during the process, and how might those lessons shape the way you approach future projects?

ERIC: Over the years, I’ve been learning the process of how important it is to be in a good head space while being in the studio, whether that's by myself or with the band or with other artists. I think that it's really important to focus on the emotional state that you're in, the energy you're putting in, and the presence that you have in the studio and being creative. I think that comes through in the songs and in the recordings. When you're having fun and you’re exploring, you feel like a kid. You're just really, really present and diving deep into your emotions or someone else's emotions and being present with them or being present with yourself. You can sense that there was a good energy going on in the studio. I think that it's getting good sleep, exercise, eating right and having a good headspace.

LUNA: How do you hope listeners will use Holding Onto the Holy as a soundtrack to their own personal experiences? What messages, emotions or experiences do you hope they can take away from the album?

ERIC: What I would love people to take from the album is just the curiosity and the want to be creative themselves and the want to be creative in a way that is honoring what a listener is into, is the driving factor, the motivation, I think, for creativity. For me, the best results have come from following my gut and my tastes and what I like, and closing the blinders to the outside world, or what other people are going to think about it. The most excited I've ever been in the creative process has been when I follow my gut and when I follow my instincts on something. I would love for people to listen to the record and feel that. I hope that they could feel that freedom of expression. I hope that they can take away my introspection on the album and the lyrics that I wrote and the meaning behind it.

LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the upcoming year look like that you would like to share with Luna?

ERIC: I feel incredibly grateful and I feel very lucky to be able to make music and art for a living. I am very excited to put out my first solo album. I just got married in October of last year. My wife and I are going to be spending more time in Nashville, so we'll be going between Los Angeles and Nashville, and I'm writing a new record with Young the Giant. I'm really looking forward to spending a lot of time with my loved ones and being in the studio, playing some shows, but mostly really, really excited to continue to write and record music and spend time with the people I love.

LUNA: Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you would like to add?

ERIC: I have a few shows coming up, if anyone's in these cities and wants to see the album played live, I'll be playing New York City. I'll be playing the show in Brooklyn January 24 which is the day the album's released. I'll be doing a show in Nashville on January 27, and a show in Los Angeles on January 31. I'm doing a mini album celebration tour where I'll be playing the album front to back with three different bands playing with me.