Jolie Holland – Escondida

Given all the 5-star review and year-end best-ofs, plus a Shortlist Prize nomination, for 2003’s Catalpa, ex-Be Good Tanyas member Jolie Holland must have felt the pressure when making her sophomore effort. Escondida, inevitably, substitutes some of Catalpa’s outta-the-blue Basement Tapes charm for a more mannered brand of roots minimalism. On the stripped-down numbers she sounds self-conscious, and opening the record with two exceedingly hushed, sweet-but-slight ditties about court(ship) and spark — the lilting neo-Piedmont blues of “Sascha” and the slightly jazzier “Black Stars” — seems like a forced concession.

Holland picks up steam by the third track, though, a splash of Dixielandish sass modeled after “Old Time Religion” called “Old Fashioned Morphine” that signals Escondida is to be a more fleshed-out affair than its predecessor. “Good Bye California” is upbeat and twangy, melodically and rhythmically kin to “Me And Bobby McGee”, and it finds Holland fully divested of her Catalpa Appalachian wraith persona; its suicidal narrative (“I’m pre-meditating crime/Of a personal kind/I’m about to go out of my mind”) is as darkly compelling as a Sylvia Plath poem.

Still, Escondida, in its diversity, makes it hard to get a handle on Holland, the record’s unfocused nature mirrored by the CD booklet’s deliberately grainy/blurry cover photo. Could Holland have gone anywhere but down following the huge Catalpa buzz? Don’t worry; a long career beckons, and she’ll have plenty of time to recoup.