Tony Fox turn hardship into a ritual on new album 'Holy Dancing Girls'

Cornwall three-piece Tony Fox describe their music as pagan punk rock and roll, psych poetry and something closer to ritual than conventional rock performance. And across their new album 'Holy Dancing Girls', that mixture of repetition, distortion, poetry and instinct becomes a way of processing grief, isolation, homelessness, womanhood, resilience and the need to remain connected to something larger than daily life.

West Cornwall's collision of post-industrial hardship, seaside tourism, artists, farmers, fishermen and alternative communities sits behind the band’s worldview. And here, it becomes a backdrop for songs exploring the underside of ordinary life and the ways people create meaning when conventional structures fail them.

'I'm Wrecked' opens one of the album's most personal doors, addressing bereavement and the feeling that people remain present even after death. The title-track then pushes that idea further into the spiritual, imagining soulmates separated in this life but still connected somewhere beyond it.

While 'Ode to the Moon' is far more mythic. An old woman in the form of the moon guides a younger woman through darkness and the ocean before she emerges reborn as a wolf. It's an overtly symbolic piece about nature, femininity, inheritance and transformation, and it brilliantly captures the band's interest in pagan imagery without losing the personal urgency beneath it.

Elsewhere, 'Energy' confronts disconnection from nature and each other, while 'Fire', 'Rising' and 'Determination' turn persistence into almost mantra-like acts. These songs are less interested in describing recovery from a safe distance than in using music as part of the recovery itself. And that becomes central to 'Holy Dancing Girls' itself.

Tony Fox have spoken about writing these songs as notes to a future self. They're reminders to find energy, movement and light even when life feels defeated. And that philosophy is inseparable from the band's live identity, where masks, costumes, feedback, dancing and repetitive rhythms are used to break down the boundary between performer and audience.

In all, 'Holy Dancing Girls' is about presence, defiance and the belief that music and dancing remain sacred precisely because they're things hardship cannot fully take away.