Fresh off the release of her third studio album, Springtime Can Kill You, Jolie Holland is on the road again, touring with a pair of back-ups, her fiddle, guitar, and piano. The former Be Good Tanyas singer recently put on a nearly flawless (musically) show at Seattle’s Triple Door, a vintage club which proved the perfect venue for her vintage-sounding voice.
Forced by a missing tuner (misplaced, apparently, in a guitar case moved by a too-efficient stagehand) to begin with piano-based songs, Holland gave a performance that amply spanned her ample, and growing, catalog. Her voice was in excellent form, readily displaying the echoes of music from the 1930s and 1940s that have easily become her trademark. Her jazzy edge, while never fully thrust to the fore, nicely matched the lilting Southern folk and old-time country inflections also so common to her music, creating a musical pastiche like no other contemporary performer. Both her playing and that of her band capably underscored the strength of her writing, easily carrying tunes both basic and intricate. Holland played to an engaged house, few of whom seemed disappointed in what they heard. In short, her version of music, a pleasing blend of near-sentimental, historical charm, and contemporarily relevant songwriting, proved a welcome voice in Seattle, albeit for one night.
