by DAVID KERN

ARTIST: Jolie Holland
ALBUM: The Living and the Dead
RELEASE DATE: Now Available
www.jolieholland.com

“The world was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or the rich or the poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.” - Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses


As one might expect of an album entitled The Living and the Dead, Jolie Holland’s fourth solo album (of that name, so we’re clear) is full of paradox - down right littered with them, in fact. The lead singer and co-founder of the currently-on-hiatus The Be Good Tanya’s, has created a sultry, sexy folk album built upon blues roots and a jazz foundation that borrows as heavily from generations long gone as from today’s musical influences. In style and in substance, The Living and the Dead is about the complex relationship between time past and future, and between regret and hope.

On the one hand, Holland leans on today’s blues-infused alt-country, the kind made so hip by bands like Wilco, and does so with great success. But she also pays artistic homage to the rich sounds of old-timey blue grass, juke joint jazz, and Waits-ian eccentricity. Together, the varying styles and sounds dissolve into a furiously entertaining and always inspiring collage of lush melodies and foot-tappin’ rhythms. Whether she’s plugged-in and rocking or tenderly fingering the keys of a piano during a lonesome ballad, Jolie Holland always hits the right notes.

Despite the many shapes her songs take, the album has a remarkable cohesian to it, due, in large part, to Holland’s ability to sing in any style, and sing well in all of them; she seems to have unlimited range. She is able to add a rock n’ roll edge to the sultry jazz tones that her voice naturally seems to take just as easily as to croon a twangy country number, which she is capable of doing with the best of ‘em. And thanks to the combined efforts and talents of indie god M. Ward, longtime Tom Waits collaborator Marc Ribot, and drummer Rachel Blumberg (M Ward, Bright Eyes, the Decemberists), everything else keeps up. With Holland in the lead, this immaculately produced album never misses a step and never hits a bump.

However, smooth though it may be, The Living and the Dead still packs a good solid punch, like a quality whiskey. Or coffee, for the caffeine inclined.

Holland’s lyrics are simultaneously tragic and hopeful, one part noir ballad, one part love song. At the same time they explore the myriad of potential regrets born in breaking up or growing up or both, they also manage to celebrate the virtues of a learning experience and the potential for growth tomorrow. In “Corrido Por Buddy”, Holland reminisces about a homeless buddy, wishing she’d “been a better friend” and contemplating his tragedy. On the not so subtly but certainly aptly titled album closer, “The Future,” she reminds a lover that their dreams won’t surely all come true, but that there is beauty in stepping out into the unknown, arm in arm, together creating a unique and personal combination of colors on the “pallette” that is life in motion. Like most songwriters, Holland explores the idea that life sucks sometimes, but she stands out in that she celebrates those who rise up above the commotion and darkness of living and, instead, hope. Of course, she also realizes that sometimes ya gotta just curl up in a hole and get away from all the madness. Sometimes sanity demands it.

Like Dylan and Waits and Guthrie and Cash, Holland deals largely in images, metaphors and similes that represent the ideas and experiences she is exploring. As such, her songs are complex and lyrical, examples of rugged American poetic songwriting at its finest; and they’re wonderfully, ambiguously postmodern in their expression. Whether she’s referring to herself as a fox burrowed deep beneath a city (think about that one for a second…) or to her lover as a battlefield medic, each of her songs takes on a distinct tone and mode of expression, the levels of which are heightened by the precisely developed sounds of the songs themselves.

The Living and the Dead is one of the finest albums of the year and ought to earn Jolie Holland a high place in the pantheon of modern, indie, folksters.

ARTIST: Jolie Holland
ALBUM: The Living and the Dead
RELEASE DATE: Now available
OUR RATING: 9.5

David Kern is editor-in-chief of Into the Hill. Email him at david@intothehill.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 4:03 am and is filed under Album Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.