From the album's very opening-- with its unexpected and wholly sweet, McGuinn-ish twelve string guitar lines kicking in 20 seconds into the thing-- Jolie Holland's fourth album packs a full and commanding wallop. It's her strongest effort yet, a mini-manifesto on how to weld varied American sounds together and also fucking rock at the same time. This is the record to buy for your dad for his birthday, and then burn for yourself afterwards (hey, he already likes Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson).
The 32-year-old Holland has worked very hard to get here. She's been this close to the cohesive greatness on display here a number of times. She helped to form the Be Good Tanyas a decade or so ago but left once it became clear that they had a more narrow (and more treacly) idea of what folk music is, just as they started to hit the top of the middle of the road. Holland's 2003 debut Catalpa, initially self-released and later put out on Anti-, had a pleasant living room aura and 27 years of great songs; it's easily among the best folk records of the last decade. Her two subsequent albums simultaneously embraced and rejected the idea of "folk," with varying results. Escondida, from 2004, had great songs and excellent players, but the arrangements were self-consciously old-timey, veering a touch too close to jazz-folk hokum. And on 2006's Springtime Can Kill You, it felt like there were too many ideas competing with each other.
Thanks in part to the able production work of Shahzad Ismaily, the problems of the past two records are a distant memory. There's a cohesiveness to this record that's stunning when one considers just how eclectic it is. "Love Henry" combines gently plucked trad guitar styles, slightly out-there guitar playing, and what's either a whistle or a singing saw, together with a dash of ethereal ambient whatsis behind a doubled vocal that intentionally sounds like it's coming from a big standalone tube radio. To do that shit in 2008 and not sound pretentious and cloying and "now playing at Starbucks" is a small miracle. The swamp cooler "Fox in Its Hole" has elements that might remind the listener of Tom Waits circa Swordfishtrombones, but this is only apparent if you think too much about it. M. Ward plays guitar on a few songs, alongside Holland herself and the ever-able Marc Ribot.
In "Mexico City" Holland intones, "I think about you Jack, watching the TV and drinking booze, shame on you." I imagine she's singing to Jack Kerouac, who published the book-length poem Mexico City Blues in 1959. If so, Holland should cut this sort of thing out. She's always spoken to ghosts in her music-- or at least says nice things about them. One of her best songs namechecks Isabelle Eberhardt and William S. Burroughs, while on another she sings "nobody plays guitar like Blind Willie McTell." Such dues-paying and earnest homage-making is charming from a brand-new artist and judicious from an elder one. But for an artist in the midst of her career, it feels a bit like a crutch.
Still, a few poorly chosen lyrics aren't much to complain about. I keep coming back to Holland's Texas phrasing, in which she stretches out the simplest words into more syllables than there are in the ingredients listed on the side of a soda can. And as appealing as that can sound, Holland only sings like that when the material calls for it. She's never been as in control of her voice, an incredible instrument that is as strong as it is attractive. And on The Living and the Dead, it's found just the right setting.
