Jolie Holland is a powerful force on her recent album Haunted Mountain. As we learned in our interview, Holland is a deep thinker and her thirst for radical change comes through not just in her lyrics — but the music itself.
Country music/Americana/what have you is typically a lyrics-first genre, but we are seeing an increasing number of artists introducing formalism to their work: Robert Ellis, Jason Hawk Harris, and, here, Holland’s attention to detail make the lurching, disintegrating compositions a character in her songs. As Holland invokes the revolution and calls us to love the land as much as we love ourselves, we are as disoriented, comforted, and enveloped by emotion as if these visions had come to pass now.
“Feet on the Ground” is a daring tight-rope act in minimalism, with Holland and her band experimenting with negative space as much as they are storytelling. “Me And My Dream” sounds the most “traditional” — Holland delivering a tortured waltz as the music refuses to play its part, teasing, lingering, and pulling away from Holland’s voice like a noncommittal lover.
Overall, Haunted Mountain is awash with what can only be described as a velvety blackness. There is something comforting and familiar even as the album is daring, grasping at outer space and yearning to go Beyond anything we can do on our own — only as a collective.