Holly Golightly has enough experience not to draw from it. She released her first solo album in 1995, after spending a few years in Thee Headcoatees; since then, she has kept up a steady pace of new material, at least one of these per year: singles comps, odd and ends packages, live shows, and (oh yeah) traditional albums. That rate of production often seems crucial to the palatability of her new old-timey music, preventing her from overthinking her songs or her performances while keeping everything loose and tossed off. As a result, she sounds a lot less manicured and a lot more convincing than upstarts like Langhorne Slim or Scott H. Biram.
In fact, writing on her web site, she sounds almost apologetic explaining that it took five days to record Dirt Don't Hurt, her second collaboration with the Brokeoffs. Their previous effort, You Can't Buy a Gun When You're Crying (which, you have to admit, is useful advice), was wrapped up in four days. And while she does admit "it may seem a little over-produced to some!" Golightly hasn't gone all Dave Fridmann on us: That extra day doesn't ruin the antique luster of her songs, but just focuses the collection considerably. It's still a heartily ramshackle affair, with pots and pans for percussion, rudimentary banjo picking, and what sound like first take on every track. The album's clattery rawness is its chief appeal.
Some explanation may be required: The Brokeoffs isn't a real backing band, as the pluralized name might suggest. Instead, it's just some dude named Lawyer Dave, who has been playing upright bass for Golightly for about a decade now. He provides the clatter, even sings in a cough on menacing opener "Bottom Below". Their sandpaper and satin voices blend nicely on the country lament "Up Off the Floor" and they imbue "Indeed You Do" and "Slow Road" with a folksy eeriness that lurches and claws at the recriminating lyrics. The slapdash "Gettin' High for Jesus" puts the pot in pots-and-pans. A Holly/Lawyer original, it could be a cover of some late-60s hippie novelty hit by, say, Country Joe & the Fish.
At times Dirt Don't Hurt gets away from them: The clamor becomes grating (the demonstrative metal smacks that kick off ("Three Times Under"), the murder-and-mayhem storytelling sounds like dress-up ("My 45"), and the duo risk the sort of preciousness that sinks some of their sepia-toned peers (the clucks and bocks on "Cluck Old Hen"). But more often than not, they make virtues of these shortcomings, as on the closer "I Wanna Hug Ya, Kiss Ya, Squeeze Ya". This Claudia Swann cover ought to sound unbearably saccharine, but thanks to the rumbling electric guitar and Holly and Lawyer's Mickey & Sylvia vocal trade-offs, it's the album's highlight-- the reconciliation after all the bickering-- underscoring how well the duo play old songs as if they wrote them and write new songs that sound decades old.
