Springtime Can Kill You

Jolie Holland

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 9, 2006)
• Original Release Date: May 9, 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Anti
• ASIN: B000F3AAOS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #67,370 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The test of an artist's true bearing is often found in their second album, the notion being that there's been a lifetime leading up to the debut, and then just a year or two for its successor. Jolie Holland has risen to the occasion with aplomb. Writing specifically for this release as well as for a band for the first time, there's a resonant bearing to the set as a whole. A dreamy quality pervades the set. As the instrumentation subtly varies from track to track, it further underscores the changing settings of a mind running wild while the body sleeps. Holland also addresses the idea overtly on the song "Nothing Left to Do But Dream." The gentle narrative offers surprises, such as the jarring, "I took my sister to the river and I came back alone." Small combo arrangements throughout serve to empower the lyrics--cliché-free and full of emotional breadth. --David Greenberger

Product Description

This 12-track song-cycle is a crossroads where haunting meets joyful; a voice from the heavens singing stories of the underworld. Holland's songs rise and fall like heavy eyelids and convey the peace between asleep and awake, creating a special place for you to be. Sounds from past and present-tense waltz together to a never ending melody that flickers between folk, jazz, blues, and pop. Holland's lyrics conjure characters and situations one might find in the surrealistic celluloid of Jim Jarmusch. As with all good dreams, there is an anything-goes spirit leading the way. Its this level of bravado that prompted All Music Guide to describe Holland's sound as "a listening experience that is singular, startling, and soulful.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Got those Deep Dysthymic Blues, June 27, 2006

By	My Uncle Stu (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

You know you are in for some blues when you see an album titled "Springtime Can Kill You." But what kind of blues are we getting? Not the broken-hearted, misfortune blues,
Instead we get what I would call the Dysthymic Blues. Jolie sings, with Klonopin flavored slurring phrases, the blues of brooding, help-rejecting gloom. Blues that are more than situational. Rather a sense of cheerlessness that are wrapped up in character, blues that can't be easily cured because her self-pity is too important to her, too protective. Rather than being replaced, her sadness, if taken away, would leave her with a gaping void that could only be filled with uncontrolled anger and anxiety. These songs give us a sullen blues fueled by an anger at the world that is observant and accurate, but no less self-defeating for it.

I'm not knocking her. I'm just expressing the vibe I get from listening to this album. None of this matters, she's not my sister, not my friend, what matters is if you like the music.

And I do. Musically, I like her. She's a good musician, and her songs are creative. This isn't music I could listen to all the time, but it's music I can enjoy when I'm in a certain heavy-lidded, tranquilly-low frame of mind that can resonate with her attitude.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars out of the bayou and moving uptown, July 11, 2006

By	a superintelligent shade of the color blue (minneapolis) - See all my reviews

Jolie Holland's first album, "Catalpa", sounded almost like a Library of Congress recording from the 1930s, of some porch singer in the bayou. Her second album (first "real" album), "Escondida", didn't sound primitive anymore, but was definitely tentative about all this newfangled band stuff. But with her third album, she's moved out of that bayou for good. She no longer sounds barefoot... instead, perhaps some well-worn used pumps from a thrift shop, opium in a tentament apartment rather than moonshine on the back porch.

It's easy to say she's on her way to becoming a female Tom Waits, but that's perhaps too easy. Certainly, the similarities are there - the murky sound, the exaggerated voice, lyrics drawn from the deepest wells of weird Americana, blues that sound more like some uptown cousin of Son House than a white adopted grandchild of Muddy Waters. And maybe more similar, you'll either love her or hate her. But if you're even looking here, you'll likely love her. And maybe, if you're especially lucky or unlucky, she'll love you back.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a song!, May 16, 2006

By	Charles Mccollum "Big Jolie fan" (Logan, Utah) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Only one song, the title track, really stood out for me on the first few listens of this album, but oh what a song! It makes the purchase price well worth it. "Springtime Can Kill You" comes from some place distant yet right under your nose. The way the tempo and base line swell from drowsy to quick to drowsy, coupled with Jolie's meandering voice and the profound lyrics, all combine to create one of the most hypnotic and fascinating musical settings I've ever heard. The pollen is so thick in this song it almost makes me sneeze.