Jolie Holland – Haunted Mountain

Almost a decade on from Wine Dark Sea, her soul-stirring, saint-summoning, Homeric-laden blues stomper of a sixth solo album, Jolie Holland returns on short notice with Haunted Mountain, a curled sibling of the Buck Meek album of the same name, with the pair co-writing five of the other’s tracks. Unspooling one of the richest and most dexterous voices in the business for the first time in too long, ‘2,000 Miles’ opens with a tingling trepidation reminiscent of ‘Catalpa Waltz’ before folding into something warmer, as Holland wraps her tongue around tangible distances and impalpable concepts like mirrored dreams and the barely pronounceable phrase ‘metaphysicists say’. ‘Feet On The Ground’ boasts a breathy industrial rumble which was created by running a drum machine through an amplifier into a vast barn, with even the whistling coda proffering the feeling of a ramshackle discotheque, while shredded strings give way to a plaintive duet with Meek on ‘Highway 72’, a road and riverside wayfarer which features Holland’s sublime playing on the violin.

Most of the songs on Haunted Mountain are performed as a trio, with Holland joined by the percussionist Justin Veloso and the guitarist Adam Brisbin. ‘Me And My Dream’ starts off demure and turns into a gospel roller, while ‘One Of You’ is defined by its spectral choir and spacious tread. The title track differs starkly from Meek’s high-pitched almost crystalline warble as Holland’s melismatic vocal over languid accompaniment and James Riotto’s fuzzy bass bring out the golden hues inherent to the lofty atmosphere. And on ‘Orange Blossoms’ the artist surveys the poverty, homelessness and environmental collapse of our workaday world, juxtaposing life on the precipice with the insipid ‘dick-measuring contest’ of contemporary politics before pigeons and crows sweep the empty sky and chirping cicadas bring down the curtain on ‘What It’s Worth’. Holland explains:

When the world is sacred, we are moved to protect it. Elves stop highways in Iceland. Fairies save forests in Ireland. Even though the numinous is beyond reason, it’s a motivating, communicative idea. You can tell it to a kid, and when the kid grows up they might understand it ecologically, or they might understand it aesthetically. The numinous is a huge idea.