Jolie Holland
I came across an article about Jolie Holland and her new cd about a week ago. The review sounded promising enough: girl born and raised in Texas, lives in San Francisco, makes music that combines folk, jazz, blues, country, etc. Outside of the San Francisco part, she sounded like plenty of local artists.
I’m a big fan of the whole singer/songwriter genre. Is that a genre? Anyway, I like music without the studio sheen. I also like singers with an accent. Texas if I can get it. I’m thinking about lobbying Congress to make losing your accent on purpose a crime against nature.
So, I stopped by Jolie’s website and listened to a couple of songs from her first album. Most were demo tracks not originally intended for release. I was blown away. The songs were unbelievably good. I found a couple of mp3s she is offering from the new album on another site. They were also wonderful.
It was all too much, so I bought the album. I’ve been listening to it for a week now, and I’m just amazed at how good it is. It gets better every time it cycles back to the first track and starts over. She has a strange way of enunciating certain words. It’s very interesting.
I don’t know how to describe her music. The reviews about it being country, jazz, folk, etc. were all correct, but it’s something more than that. I don’t know what. I’m pretty sure that track 10, “Damn Shame” is about how she performed at SXSW in March and I missed it.