Robin Holcomb

Robin Holcomb | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 24, 1990)
• Original Release Date: October 23, 1990
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nonesuch
• ASIN: B000002H8M
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,292 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So poignant, so heart achingly beautiful, August 6, 2000

By 

Matt Harris (seattle, washington United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Robin Holcomb (Audio CD)

This is an album I come back to again and again, over years. The poetry of it is mesmerizing. All the pieces, every one of them; they all go together and they all build upon each other. And then there's the final breathtaking, heartstopping track. "Deliver me" shatters me every time I hear it, and is the reason why I hold this album in such safe, and sacred reserve. Holcomb's refrain--"the light / is only perfect / for a very, short time" aches with wisdom and longing, and speaks so poignantly of our day-to-day lives. I can only listen to this album occasionally, I hold it in such high regard. In her own inimitable way, Robin Holcomb has channeled a path for that ray of perfect, elusive, light. God bless her for that.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry From a Back Highway, June 22, 1998

By 

Craig Riecke (East Syracuse, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Robin Holcomb (Audio CD)

There's a myth that rural life is simpler, sparer, more easily understood. "Robin Holcomb" is for people who know better. An excellent pianist who mixes classical with folk elements, Holcomb writes lyrics that work well as poetry. Yet, she combines simple words into staggeringly complex arrangements. If the line, "The light is only perfect for a very short time" makes you pause in thought, you'll love this album. Recommended If You Like: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, John Prine

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bleak, beautiful, ripe for rediscovery, December 18, 2011

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: Robin Holcomb (Audio CD)

In the rap- and grunge-dominated cultural revolution that was the Bush Senior era, singer/songwriters had to adjust their tactics to cope with an era that expected its artists to devote time and energy to left-wing causes like Planned Parenthood and homosexual rights. In the case of Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, the most famous new artists in this field to emerge during the Bush Senior presidency, this took the form of music whose texture and message contrasted in a manner that was unusual but for a brief period notably artistic: in both cases revealing things about the lives of women few had before. Robin Holcomb, as much as sixteen years older than DiFranco and nine years older than Tori, never tried to fit radical feminism into her work. Already thirty-five when she released her Europe-only debut "Larks, They Crazy", Holcomb was grounded in avant-garde jazz and the debut was almost entirely instrumental if beautifully eccentric and showing traces of what was to come.

Still, "Robin Holcomb", her debut on major label Elektra and her first release outside Europe, is a revelation. On "Yr Mother Called Them Farmhouses", Holcomb shows the reality of domestic violence against women in a manner that is blacker and deeper than even Tori Amos on "Leather" or "Me and a Gun", creating images of serious blood flow. The bleak way in which she says "nothing much grows in these mountains anyway" conveys the sense of a ruined culture like nothing else. More than that, the music on "Yr Mother Called Them Farmhouses" manages to emulate Hejira-era Joni Mitchell in moving from jazz to free-form folk so well with he acoustic guitar.

However, even on the more jazz-oriented tracks, Holcomb achieves almost the same bleak despair, as on the hypnotic opening pair of "Nine Lives" and "The American Rhine" whose seemingly simple (to the point of childish) poetry actually conveys deep pessimism about environmental destruction using very few words and unique instrumental combinations that achieve a sound intermittent between big-band jazz and acoustic folk - but never able to be mistaken for anything. "Troy" is even jazzier and less dark, but its dramatic, fleeting beauty makes the rural life seem as hard as it is - but without making it look dull and unrewarding. The two side-closing tracks, "So Straight and Slow" and "Deliver Me" are almost like the first song's title suggests: piano-based, sultry, yet with an atmosphere all their own as Holcomb has a look at the brutality of highway driving in a strange way. Then "Hand Me Down All Stories" and "this poem is in memory of!" shows Holcomb at her most musically eclectic, yet solid with their jazzy clarinets and saxophones combining flawlessly with electric guitars. The style is very hard to get used to at first because of Holcomb's slow, leisurely pace on all tracks except "Troy" and the subtlety with which she shifts mood. Thus, it is not surprising that this uninviting, dark music escaped attention even from critics when it was released, and that Holcomb became the epitomy of an "under-underground" artist as she aged. Yet, there is so much depth and beauty in "Robin Holcomb" that it can become an irresistible lure if listened to enough, so that one can hope for a rediscovery as the music of the Bush Senior era comes under more intensive study (if it indeed does).