A fire siren boots up as a clap-along snare cracks its way across a crushed up vocal telling some barely indecipherable story about talking to an operator who's either gonna get murdered or is coming to murder you or something but then it all cuts out leaving a whispered "already dead."

The song launches back into the chorus with the slanted scribbly voice half chanting half crooning the catch phrase lyrics over the naked crunch of punk riffing chords: "It's the way you've got me wrapped around your little finger."

The chorus transitions back into another verse via a catchy melody that sounds as much like a distortion laden 8 bit video game as it does anything else.
"Mr operator am I loud and clear?" asks the singer before engaging in some entertaining lyrical cleverness uttering, "I'm sorry all of my apologies are insincere."

By the time the second chorus has run its course that catchy 8 bit sounding melody is transforming into a head slamming lead break shored up by drama intensifying sustained keyboard.

Then it melts away.

This is where Holloway Holiday prove they're doing something worth listening harder to. Up until now the song has been a well-executed and cleverly constructed pop punk party song with enough of a sonic twist to make it stand out like a fence post painted a different shade in the gentrified neighbourhood of the noise of billions of new rock songs. Frankly by this point they'd already earned themselves a favourable review.
But this song: Please Hold (An Operator Will Be With You Indefinitely) veers violently into a wide open space occupied by a lurching drum rhythm and pensive piano line. Disconcerting whispers haunt the periphery while at regular intervals the band instruments dive in to deliver sound expanding stabs.
Shocking feedback bleeds its way in as the guitar cuts a diminishing and augmenting amorphous refrain through the room before the band return to a sing along section that links the challenging trip we've just endured to the time-honoured ONCE MORE WITH FEELING of a third chorus.

I've flipped back and forth between choruses and I'm 99 percent sure the last one doesn't increase tempo from the first but somehow, probably because of the tempo modulations in the sections before and after, Holloway Holiday managed to make it not just feel like, but seem like they literally played the last chorus more urgently. I order you to appreciate how good this is. They used tempo to do what every producer who saves the last 1 dB of headroom for the last chorus does with volume and compression.

I'm Callum and this was I Order You to Like This, featuring Holloway Holiday and their 5 star song
Please Hold (An Operator Will Be With You Indefinitely).

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