I will present recent developments in the holographic aspects of non-AdS spacetimes, from the perspective of GR and EFT. My focus will be on a simple model that contains both AdS and linear dilaton spacetimes as particular cases. I will show that the holography of this model leads to a non-conformal fluid with a very simple equation of state. Notably, the linear dilaton features a pressureless fluid that may be identified as dark matter in a cosmological braneworld model. I will also explore the interplay of the gravitational spectrum and of holographic entanglement entropy with bulk singularities. This will lead us to a connection between confinement (detected via various criteria) and the nature of the bulk singularities. Finally, I will further discuss some surprising aspects of the linear dilaton background that warrant more investigation.