Already glimpsing the end of the year and so many other things, while the landscape continues to expand and contract in an unstoppable event of external and internal wars, unraveling lives and breaking hearts at will, we find this sonorous “Enchanted Mountain” on the way. that pauses reality; immersing ourselves in a kind of healing oasis from which, when we leave, it will also leave its mark on us. There should be no need to introduce Jolie Holland, genuine singer-songwriter from Houston who possesses in her vocal cords the powerful natural warmth and moving fragility that only the chosen ones have access to, at that crossroads where the heartbreaking whisper of Billie Holiday merges with that of Cat Power. Among her loudly proclaimed fans, we find legends like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.
Although Holland starts from the most traditional folk in his takeoff, already in his brilliant debut, “Catalpa” (02), and in the essential and beautiful “Hidden” (04) that follows, unfolds a timeless nebula in which the primordial essence of American music beats, adding elements of jazz, blues and country to folk with the same mastery, personality and spell. These two launches were followed by four more, the last one, before this seventh “Haunted Mountain” that concerns us, was the magnificent “Wine Dark Sea” (14), perhaps his best work, where that electric metamorphosis that he always carried within him (the Velvet Underground in his veins), was filtered and reflected with more rawness and overflowing containment. To these solo albums we must add “Wildflower Blues” (17), album shared with Samantha Parton, adventure companion during her time in The Be Good Tanyas.
Finally, after almost a decade after the velvety and lightning “Wine Dark Sea”,(14) with which we were able to enjoy it live in Spain (2015 tour), reappears now with “Haunted Mountain”, another masterpiece of Jolie Holland. Spooky, resplendent and magnetic in equal parts. Nine songs in which feelings and reflections not only run through the wounds of their own skin, but their vibrant poetics are highly committed to the social evils that stalk and suffocate us: from the shadow of fascist ideologies that flourish and poison coexistence. , to the inexorable damage that we are doing to the planet or the polluting machismo that continues its course, to the shadow and the sun… But, above all, that palpitating hope and desire, sometimes weak, but firm, to find beauty in everyday life and hold on to it. Thus, the grooves catch us from the beginning “2,000 Miles”, with that smoky and intoxicating phrasing of Jolie, which caresses and scratches, while the indecipherable secrets of love escape us like water between our fingers; followed by the disturbing and most experimental of the lot “Feet On The Ground”, with an effervescent pulse of minimalist electronics and industrial flutter, spectral percussions and a whistle that makes its way through the darkness of collective exploitation, in search of individual revolution. A song that would have fit perfectly, under the dream machinery sung by Björk, in “Dancer in the Dark”.
We get into a convertible Cadillac and take the “Highway 72”feeling the American breeze on our faces, with Holland giving free rein to his outsider spirit and total admiration for the beat generation, in a dazzling duet with Buck Meek (Big Thief guitarist), both so creatively connected, that the latter his solo work, shares its title with Holland’s album, “Haunted Mountain”. The freedom of living on the margins, based on high-quality folk-rock, with the voices intertwining melodically to perfection (aftertaste of Norah Jones from The Little Willies), plus extra violins and keyboards that end up setting a course uncertain, but clear, on the road, keep going to know where we are going: “I won’t know where I’m headed until I’m further along… / One foot in front of the other on the lost highway”.
The most hypnotic folk spiral drags us out to sea with the mantric and atmospheric “Won’t find me”, and then rock in the slow-burning nudity of a “One of you” that syncs beats, for the world reaching its equator and makes it spin again, purer and freer. And now in the final stretch, three pieces that are well worth the almost ten years of waiting: the overwhelming interpretation of the title track, “Haunted Mountain”, a crisp and electric (pedal steel in control) invitation to travel (with guaranteed reward) the paths less traveled; and the siren songs of (my favorite) “Me and my Dream”, in which I always fall into an infinite loop of listening from which I cannot and do not want to escape, with Jolie leaving her soul in each phrasing. And if in the two previous masterpieces you can hear the echoes of the best Lucinda Williams, with the twilight “Orange Blossoms” (showing the boredom and lethargy of a patriarchal political system that does not stop lengthening its tentacles, in addition to denouncing how the most extremist policies easily absorb the disenchanted), sets fire to the hands of all the clocks there have been and will be, achieving an interpretive sensitivity so powerful and overflowing with nuances that, from her vocal cords, her own redeeming northern lights reflect in the darkness, in which Lady Day, Chan Marshall, Mark Lanegan and Nick Cave smile in admiration.
The spell and the calm calm of closure guide us in the sleepless march of “What it’s worth”, with a final whistle and sandy percussion that leads us to the top of this “enchanted mountain” that you should climb again and again and, from there, from the highest point, who knows: understand ourselves a little better and to the world around us, seeing and feeling, intimately, the indescribable.