Jolie Holland Issue #28

Springtime Can Kill You (Anti-)

By Stephanie Kinnear
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 7:15am

Since her days with the Be Good Tanyas, Jolie Holland has distinguished herself from the folky singer-songwriter pack with strange, sparse arrangements and a honey-flavored, rusty, versatile voice that is prone to slip gracefully into periods of intense non-articulation where words are only as important as the beautiful sounds they make. Who knows what she’s singing about and who cares? It all sounds like heartbreak and ice rattling in the bottom of an empty glass of whiskey, and redemption. That is to say, it sounds damn good.

Holland’s appeal is rooted in the mystery of her songs, the feeling that she might have been transported here from another time when hard men made liquor in bathtubs and then played harmonicas on the porch beneath the moonlight. On her third album, Springtime Can Kill You, Holland continues where she left off on her previous albums — singing songs about lonely drunks, hobos, broken hearts, and listless wanderers.

On songs like the poppy, light opener, “Crush In The Ghetto,” the jazzy title track, and the bittersweet but rich and genre-less “Nothing Left To Do But Dream,” Holland shows off her whole repertoire, moving from blues to jazz to folk with ease.

Then there’s the album’s magnificent closing track, “Mexican Blue.” It is probably the most perfect love song Holland has ever recorded, although she claims it actually has something to do with her departure from the Be Good Tanyas. No matter … I can’t quite make out what she’s saying there in the end, but it sounds like the stuff of good, old-fashioned love to me.