A record with maybe even more immediate force than his 2018 album, Oh Me Oh My by Lonnie Holley is here. With appearances from a host of guests, the material here feels expansive and intimate at the same time. Holley, a tremendous artist in multiple media, still manages to craft music that feels outside all genres.
The mournful "Oh Me Oh My" with Michael Stipe is stark and affecting, a bracing distillation of Holley's power as a musician, while "I Am a Part of the Wonder", a number with Moor Mother, is percussive and invigorating. "None of Us Have But a Little While" is transcendent, a song of some odd hope in a hereafter. Sharon Van Etten adds emotion to this most emotional of pieces, while the elegiac "Kindess Will Follow Your Tears" benefits from the addition of Bon Iver. Still, Lonnie Holley is driving this record, not the guests or producer (Jacknife Lee).
Oh Me Oh My reaches a kind of peak on "I Can't Hush", a pointed spoken-word piece. This one distills the album down into one performance, but the whole album travels over territory that's uniquely American and full of the carnage of America's treatment of men like Lonnie Holley in the south in decades gone. This is heavy stuff, yes, but it's also perhaps Lonnie's most listenable offering. This is a journey for a listener, but Holley's conversational performance style draws one in in a nearly hypnotic fashion. Rarely do I say this, but your soul will benefit from a listen to this record. It's that kind of release.
Oh Me Oh My by Lonnie Holley is out now via Jagjaguwar.
[Photo: David Raccuglia]