Living & The Dead - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
With a vocal style hailed by the Village Voice as "sultry and sweet, despairing and lonely", Jolie has experimented in the past with various settings for her unique, jazz-inflected voice. This time working with such collaborators as M. Ward (She & Him, My Morning Jacket) and Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello), she has embraced both the rocking side of her roots, and the compositional possibilities of the studio, multi-tracking her voice for the first time. The results have intensified the evocative moodiness of her music but also brought out a rollicking looseness.

Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Jolie goes to show you don't ever know October 15, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful

With The Living and the Dead, Jolie Holland continues to find her way towards normalcy yet still delivers a good, and at times great album. Springtime Can Kill You grew on me quite slowly over the past couple years, and I think that's where I'm at with The Living and the Dead.

The weirdest thing about this album is that it has her biggest stars to date (namely Marc Ribot and M. Ward) yet musically it's sometimes her most generic album. As much as I love some of these songs, they'd be even better were they brought to life via the bands on Catalpa, Escondida or Springtime.

Mexico City is the sonic equivalent of the American Traditional style of tattooing and Corrido Por Buddy most suffers from the band at hand. Palmyra is, for me, one of the premier examples of just how overhyped a guitarist Marc Ribot is. There is nothing here you've not heard before, which is a shame as in the past Jolie's albums have had singular moments in the history of American music. As much as I like the strength of some of these songs, their execution is generally much more common than Old Fashioned Morphine, Darlin Ukelele, Black Hand Blues, or most importantly, ALLEY FLOWERS, etc... or even Stubborn Beast, Crazy Dreams, etc... from the Springtime album...

...but then you get a song like Fox In Its Hole. Slow and drippy like electric molasses, it features Ribot's best playing (On a National, and still nowhere near what Bob Brozman could have brought to this song). With today's American climate, it's impossible for me to hear these lyrics and think of "honey" as a metaphor for anything less than consumerism, materialism and oil. If you ever saw the quiet, pained Come Early Morning with one of Ashley Judd's best performances, you'll be able to imagine Sweet Loving Man and The Future working perfectly within that story.

With Love Henry, if you have the required old-timey training you'll instantly recognize this song and/or the family of traditional tunes from which it comes. This is a highlight moment of her career, and on harp-guitar she delivers the best guitar playing of the album.

It may end up that of her 4 albums so far, this will be my 4th favorite. The darkened, modernistic pre-war country voodoo blues of the first 2 albums is gone but it still shows an artist of great emotional depth and evolving talents. Right now I think of it more in the realm of 3 stars simply because while Carla Bozulich grows deeper and more introspective (as on Hello, Voyager and Dandelions On Fire, I'll never understand why product links for this fantastic album are never an option though this site carries and sells it), Jolie keeps moving closer to normal. Still, I greatly enjoy this album. Experience has shown me that I always think more highly of her albums over time.

5 out of 5 stars

Jolie Holland Turns to Rock & Roll October 12, 2008
I think this is the best Jolie Holland album to date. Don't get me wrong - I love her slow, haunting ballads with just her and a guitar, but the rock and roll on this album is amazing and I can't stop listening. "Mexico City" starts the album off as a perfect opener and you know that it can only get better from there. The songs still have those haunting lyrics that she's known for (from "Palmyra": my little heart is a graveyard / it's a no man's land *and* I'll dance at your funeral if you dance at mine) but the tempo has changed. This is so good that I don't even know if I'll buy another album for the remainder of 2008.

5 out of 5 stars

Unabashedly Delicious October 12, 2008
This is Jolie Holland's most listener-friendly album to date. (And I love everything she's ever done.) She has emerged from the haunting darkness of "Springtime Can Kill You" to an exuberant, confident, rockin' masterpiece. I have been playing it continuously since I got it; I'm so grateful to have music like this to fall in love with.

5 out of 5 stars

Highly Spirited October 12, 2008
I was caught by this album when I first heard it, I was really surprised by how listenable it is. While this album does lack the gorgeous smoky darkness and textures of Springtime, The Living and The Dead, is still a brilliant album. The atmosphere is surrendered for a more lively collection of songs, but the songs are still brilliantly arranged and preformed. And the melodies are better. For me the Lyrics aren't as good as on Springtime, but the construction of the songs themselves are better, they are more solid and it's easy to hear Jolie becoming a much better songwriter.

It's a beautiful, buoyant record, full of spirit and still a little shadow to play this record brilliantly.

5 out of 5 stars

Incredible Artist and Performer November 13, 2008
I just saw Jolie perform at Eddie's Attic in Atlanta. Truly incredible performance. Effortless performance done to perfection. My friend, who had never heard of her, told me in the first 30 seconds, "I'm in love." I have followed Jolie's music since I first heard of her on Catalpa. My favorite is "Springtime can kill you", but this record is really growing on me fast. If you get a chance go see this great american artist live. She's so friendly. After the show at Eddie's Attic, she gladly had her picture taken with me, signed my cd, and just hung out after the show chatting about nonsense. Jolie is just one big hit away from super stardom. Catch her while you can. Now that she is performing with a band, she will be doing much bigger performances soon.

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