ALBUM REVIEW: Personal and Political Build Up Jolie Holland’s ‘Haunted Mountain’

Jolie Holland has a singular and fascinating autobiography, having been raised in a cult and finding herself homeless for five years after escaping. In the 20 years since her 2003 debut, Catalpa, she has forged a sound as singular and interesting as she is.

Her best songs, which are abundant on Haunted Mountain, have a timeless quality — sounding as though they could have existed for decades or even centuries. The title track from her newest venture sounds like a long-lost folk traditional; it’s a pedal steel-driven, atmospheric ballad that speaks to the arduous and elusive process of trying to understand oneself, and the world around us, more clearly. When Holland cries that she’s “never coming down” from the titular haunted mountain, she sounds unmistakably triumphant. Like so much of Haunted Mountain, the title track is an ode to taking the road less traveled and the rewards such a journey holds to the most determined among us.

As well as being inspired by her own experience of homelessness, Holland’s newest LP was also influenced by anti-colonial and feminist literature and a desire to find oneness with nature. These themes are most overt on the stunning “Orange Blossoms,” where she expresses weariness at a patriarchal political system that reduces matters of life and death into “this dick measuring contest.” In three incisive lines, she speaks to how extremist politics prey on and capture the disenchanted and ambivalent (“I see you flirting with destruction and despair / cozying up to tyrants and embracing the easiest answers / fascism ties it all up in a pretty little bow”).

More often than not, however, such themes find implicit, rather than explicit, expression in the music of Haunted Mountain. Holland’s experiences of personal hardship and political consciousness inform the LP’s thoughtful, freewheeling approach, and the overarching desire to find beauty in the everyday and hold on to it. On the title track, she likens dew drops to crystal balls, and on the Buck Meek duet “Highway 72,” she offers a romanticized take on a life lived on the margins (“Find a sign vacant / Dollars and dimes / and the golden smog of the afternoon”).

What ties together all of Haunted Mountain’s wondrous nine tracks is Holland’s smoky, lived-through voice, which is situated somewhere between Karen Dalton, Norah Jones, and later-era Lucinda Williams. It’s an instrument in and of itself, capable of breathing life into otherwise mundane phrases (“Don’t let your chance go to waste”) and breathing a world of feeling into just a handful of syllables. On the crestfallen closer “What It’s Worth,” Holland declares, “I thought I heard it all before / my heart is so heavy,” before her voice dissolves into near-unintelligibility. It’s an immensely powerful moment of desolation, and one that speaks to the unrivaled, intimate power of Holland’s music.

Jolie Holland’s Haunted Mountain is out Oct. 6.