{"id":2208,"date":"2015-01-02T01:52:30","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T00:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturedallroundman.com\/?p=2208"},"modified":"2019-09-16T12:54:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T11:54:02","slug":"culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-albums-of-the-year-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Culturedarm’s Albums of the Year 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Album of the Year<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Jolie Holland – Wine Dark Sea<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After the tightly drawn compositions of 2011\u2019s\u00a0Pint of Blood<\/em>,\u00a0Wine Dark Sea<\/em> finds Jolie Holland no less composed, but its pieces rumble, scuzzy and searing, in wave upon wave with her voice cohering at the centre. Songs shift seamlessly between the genres of blues, jazz, folk, and soul. There\u2019s thick feedback played through multiple guitars; reverberating piano; cello which lifts a couple of songs at their most apposite moments, notably in concert with Holland\u2019s violin as it steps and strides forth on \u2018First Sign of Spring\u2019; burly bass; and percussion which swells in time, all coming together to forge richly atmospheric, slowly forming, modulating, moving shapes of noise, the bobbing of cork and broad vessels on the sonar.<\/p>\n

Holland sounds like she\u2019s having fun, wrapping her voice around words, but more she sounds supremely confident, which is a confidence hard won by an artist performing at the peak of her powers. Nobody else could deliver a song like \u2018I Thought It Was the Moon\u2019, reminiscent of \u2018Catalpa Waltz\u2019 from her debut, as Jolie patiently navigates the words as she navigates a space, at once carefully recalled and celestially suggestive. She is generous too: just as her interpretation of Townes Van Zandt\u2019s \u2018Rex\u2019s Blues\u2019 marked the culmination of Pint of Blood<\/em>, so here the take on Joe Tex’s ‘The Love You Save’ proves one of Wine Dark Sea<\/em>‘s centrepieces. Clarinet comes to the fore on \u2018All My Love\u2019, a distorted R&B number; echoing, clip-clopping percussion underlies \u2018Out on the Wine Dark Sea\u2019; and if the album has any single highlight, it comes on \u2018Saint Dymphna\u2019, a summoning of the saint, as Jolie holds and delivers, \u2018What do you mean by that? \/ Do you mean to break my heart? \/ Do you mean to break my heart in two?’.<\/p>\n