A show from Jolie Holland is always a cause for celebration as the much-travelled multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter comes towards the end of the UK leg of her tour with dates in Ireland to follow. The venue is Piccadilly’s Neon 194, a slick cocktail bar with the music room in the basement. The room is wider than it is deep – an upmarket 100 Club – with chairs laid out in rows from the stage almost to the back of the room. There were enough standing to suggest a good attendance, and the audience made enough noise for a crowd twice its size.
Holland and Mark McKowski (of The Lost Brothers, on guitar and vocals) take to the relatively low set stage around quarter to nine, and proceed to open the set with the title track to Holland’s latest record, 2023’s “Haunted Mountain”, a song co-written with Big Thief’s Buck Meek. Holland’s voice is special – its rich texture and the way she sings rolling the lyric and the sounds in her mouth – create a sweet, smooth sound like aural honey.
There is a hum of recognition as Holland starts up ‘Mexico City‘ only to stop after a verse to try and arrange the stage lights to give equal prominence to McKowski. In the course of the discussion, the lights are turned down too low. Holland restarts the song with its twisting melody and mystic chorus hailing the “heavenly choir of the living and the dead”.
We learn that she and McKowski have just finished recording an album on Nantucket Island – “the home of the dirty joke” she says. They play two of the new songs. The first, which may well be called ‘Synchronicity’, is about how annoying synchronicity is. The second, ‘Wandering Moon’, is a co-write with McKowski and has a softer feel to it, plus some nice guitar work from the Irishman. It also has the first of the night’s whistling outros – Holland is a skilled whistler able to fill the room without amplification. She proceeds to tell us that McKowski has a trio with M Ward and Howe Gelb called Geckos. Their self-titled album is due imminently.
They return to “Haunted Mountain” for ‘Highway 72’. The song is another co-written with Meek, and the two perform it together on the record. Live, McKowski makes a creditable stab at Meek’s parts. As an aside, ‘Highway 72’ was this writer’s most-streamed track of 2024.
After a glorious delivery of ‘Damn Shame’, Holland relates how she heard of Michael Hurley’s death while travelling in a snowstorm through Flagstaff. Being both a fan and friend of Hurley’s, the news hit her hard and made the journey even more difficult. Returning home, she set about recording a tribute album, “Wolf Dispatch”, which was rapidly released in July (and co-credited with Max Knouse). They had also just finished touring a series of dates, mainly in the Pacific NW, performing Hurley’s songs and inviting support acts to do the same. Jonathan Richman had guested on one date. Tonight, Holland and McKowski give us two Hurley songs: one ,‘O My Stars’, is on the record while the other, ‘Me And Red’, is not.
After a call for requests, which she mainly doesn’t play, she digs back to “Wine Dark Sea” for the haunting ‘On And On’. It is followed by a delight of a performance of ‘All The Morning Birds‘ from her first album. A request does get played: a jaunty ‘Old Fashioned Morphine’ with lyrics changed quite a bit from the version on “Escondida”.
The set concludes with ‘Orange Blossoms’, another standout from the last album. The two musicians remain on stage as the audience applauds and resume the show encoring with ‘Palmyra’ named for a street in New Orleans’ 9th ward which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. She explained the story of a songwriting couple who lived there and were splitting up, as well as telling of a Steinway piano that wound up in Lake Pontchartrain. The audience keeps cheering but McKowski is gone, and Holland stays only to thank those present before heading to the merch table.
Earlier, we had an enjoyable set from New York expat singer-songwriter Annie Dressner, who charmed those who arrived early with her stories and whetted appetites with news of an album being recorded with Peter Bruntnell.
