Jolie Holland
(Anti-)
This is Jolie Holland's "electric album." The itinerant singer-songwriter is now based in Brooklyn (with everyone else!), and while The Living and the Dead still has the homey, rural quality that made her previous three albums so inviting and outside-of-time, it does so with electric guitars and full-band arrangements. Sometimes to the songs' detriment: Holland's slurring, wavering sense of pitch sounds unmoored against the crystalline guitar jangle in "Corrido Por Buddy" and the Stones-y chords of "Your Big Hands."
While guitarists M. Ward and Marc Ribot drop in to provide expert backing on various tracks-Ribot's particularly prominent on the appealingly creepy "Fox In Its Hole"-Holland's voice and phrasing are always the focal points, and she's at her best on downtempo songs such as "Sweet Loving Man" and less electrified ones like "You Painted Yourself In." These, as well, are the tracks most reminiscent of her previous albums, like the excellent Springtime Can Kill You. The Living and the Dead ends with a rough and tumble version of the chestnut "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)," with vocal help from her former partner in the Be Good Tanyas, Samantha Parton. It's an odd choice: it's played for laughs, with lots of giggles, and its repetitions-the title provides the only lyrics-turn into redundancies rather quickly.
Holland's not consistently playing to her strengths this time around, but she's still intriguing, and even occasionally beguiling.
Standout Tracks: "Fox In Its Hole," "Sweet Loving Man" STEVE KLINGE
