Rockabye

Robin Holcomb | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 1, 1992)
• Original Release Date: September 1, 1992
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nonesuch
• ASIN: B000002HAD
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,658 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best of the Nineties!, October 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rockabye (Audio CD)

I haven't stopped listening to this CD since I purchased it on its release date in 1992. Simply put, Ms, Holcomb is a visionary. I'm truly saddened and surprised that this CD (or one of her other 2) did not take off. Her fragile voice shimmers through these 10 haunting songscapes. This is deep music. After several listens this music settles into your bones like an old limp that won't go away. Reminding us, like Jacob of old, of how we've wrestled our way through this life and been touched by God through the knowing glances of weathered strangers.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a slightly strange idiosyncratic disk, December 5, 2003

By 

m_noland "m_noland" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rockabye (Audio CD)

This is a slightly strange, idiosyncratic disk -- but not in a bad way. Robin Holcomb has a thin country-sounding voice. She plays piano and writes unusually literate and harmonically open songs. Her better known keyboardist husband, Wayne Horvitz, assembled some really crack jazz musicians (Bill Frisell, Marty Ehrlich et al.) to interpret this country chamber jazz. The results will probably not be to everyone's liking, but I note that the used copies are being practically given away, so why not take a flyer on it?

5.0 out of 5 stars A less eccentric but still superb follow-up, December 21, 2011

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rockabye (Audio CD)

Robin Holcomb's 1990 US debut was a beautiful jazz-folk hybrid with bleak lyrics exposing the realities and hopes of life, along with a style of music that seemed both unique and out-of-time. Despite being released by major label Elektra, it was so badly promoted that even critics like Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone failed to as much as review it. Even in Europe where artistic music generally has less trouble establishing itself magazines like Q did not touch Holcomb. As a result, sales were utterly negligible, but still Holcomb was able to record a follow-up two years later for Elektra titled "Rockabye".

Compared to "Robin Holcomb", there is less of the eccentric, jazzy instrumentation on "Rockabye", and the sound is less avant-garde and more rootsy, with the exception of opening track "Widowmaker", which is a softer version of the musical poetry of "this poem is in memory of!" but is really soothing like few other songs. Second track "Help a Man" was the first song that attracted Holcomb to me genuinely and there is no mistaking how: unlike most Holcomb songs "Help a Man" has a genuinely upbeat tone but its lyrics still speak of difficulty and overcoming it as was rare in the Bush Senior Era's more famous underground artists. The beginning with Holcomb's jazzy piano gives way to a classic rock-like song after the first verse, but the song flows like a gorgeous seabreeze with lyrics that are both realistic and uplifting. Then "When I Stop Crying" turns to lyrics more personal than on Holcomb's previous albums, but the soothing character remains.

The title track continues this soothing romanticism, but with "Iowa Lands" Holcomb returns to the jazzy character of her first two albums, but with a tone that could be mistaken for one of the roots-rock bands critics like Joe S. Harrington criticised the Bush Senior Era for. The lyrics read as a documentation of the settling of North America from its humid east coast to the subhumid Great Plains, the arid Basin and Range and the Europe-like Pacific Coast, and Holcomb moves further into chronicling the environmental history of European North America throughout the second half of the album. "When Was the Last Time" is a classic of environmental exploitation and the lack of contact with nature in cities: its urgency is quite stunning. "Dixie" is a repeat of an instrumental track from her Europe-only 1989 debut "Larks, They Crazy", but with "Primavera" Holcomb looks squarely to the Pacific with a dripping sensuality that recalls Linda Perhacs on her masterpieces "Moons and Cattails" and "Delicious" (if with a very different musical style). The passion with which she sings "Liquor/On a breath/Of a win/Bearing rain" is stunning and unlike anything else she had done. "The Goodnight-Loving Trail" is another departure, being a countryfied cover of a Utah Phillips song, but the theme fits so well with the second side that Holcomb does not fail, and closer "The Natural World" takes the unusual step of setting lyrics to an old instrumental song, but listening to the "Larks, They Crazy" version makes the lyrics fit like a hand in a snuggly glove, creating a sensuous, earthy beauty - sadness mixed with hope - that is the trademarks of Holcomb's two Elektra albums.

"Rockabye" did no better than its predecessor commercially and critically, and it is no wonder Holcomb turned to more avant-garde music again on her fourth album Little Three. Still, its bleak, down-to-earth yet hopeful beauty and darkly sensual music was quite unlike anything else in the Bush Senior Era - even if less eccentric than its predecessor - and it is certainly something deserving more than a look but a re-assessment.