A Song For Friday: Lonnie Holley
Tonky is a brilliant work of music and poetry. Also, releases from Cross Record, Nick Storring, Boogarins, Molto Ohm, more eaze/claire rousay, LMNL, and Saba & No ID
To step into the world of Lonnie Holley through any of its many doors—painting, sculpture, film, writing, music—is to be greeted by a riot of creativity and more lessons in resilience than any one life of even 75 years should contain. Suffice it to say that a chaotic first act like Holley’s doesn’t usually lead to art world success and international acclaim. While I was greatly moved by a show of his art on Long Island in 2021, it wasn’t until his fourth album, 2023’s Oh Me, Oh My, which used “jazz, funk, dub, gospel, rock, and folk to investigate his roots in the Jim Crow south and his connections to the universe, humanity, and the future,” that his music fully engaged my passions.
In my review, I also remarked on the involvement of Jacknife Lee, known more for pop production but who was a sympathetic collaborator for Holley, using his production and multi-instrumental skills to help realize his vision.
Fortunately, that wasn’t a one-off. Holley’s new album Tonky also features Lee and is an extraordinarily rich experience. There is also a wealth of guests here, some of which gave me pause, like the grating Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) and the snoozy vocalist Jesca Hoop. But they both must be doing something right because there are no skips on Tonky. Other guests come to the fore, such as rappers Billy Woods and Saul Williams, but there is no question that Holley is in command throughout.
Let’s start where the album begins, with Seeds, an intense track that makes the connection between chattel slavery and Holley’s traumatic time at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. Over a tense tapestry of sound created by Lee (Bass, keys, synths, programming, percussion, and vocals) and Davide Rossi (Violin, viola, cello, and contrabass), and with supportive vocals by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak), Holley uses his trademark, highly emotive talk-singing to bring home many truths about the effects of man’s inhumanity towards man. An absorbing nine-minute masterpiece, Seeds sets the stage for an album that more than lives up to its promise. Listen.
The lyric that absolutely floored me on my third listen—I have trauma of my own—comes near the end of the song:
Oh I wish that I could rob my memory
I’d be like Midas and turn my thoughts to gold
And one day end up just being alright
Where I wouldn’t do nothing to lose my soul
Taken on their own, Holley’s lyrics often rise to the level of Pulitzer-level poetry. Tonky is an incredible work of art from a great artist. We are so lucky that his path, rocky though it was, led him to a place where he could share so much with the world.
Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.
Also out this week
Cross Record - Crush Me I keep dancing around the music of Emily Cross, mostly via Loma, her trio with Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) and Dan Duszynski, who have released some mesmerizing songs in recent years. But this arresting, tough album, her fourth or fifth as Cross Record, has hit me hard. Filled with fascinating left turns and deep emotions, it can be discomfiting, not entirely unlike some later Scott Walker, with implacable rhythms, dark layers of instruments (keyboards, guitars, basses, and more), that keep getting darker, and Cross’s voice almost buried (crushed?) by the weight of it all. The lyrics are often visual, even cinematic, as in the chorus of Designed In Hell: “Colors of a faded motel, designed in hell/Rustle of a cough drop, swiped from/side to side.”
Nick Storring - Mirante This keeps happening. I get emails from someone promoting the music of others and then it only dawns on me much later that they’re artists themselves. Exhibit A this week is Toronto’s Storring, a tireless champion for avant garde sounds from north of the 49th parallel but who also just released his ninth solo album. I can only imagine the delights ahead in Storring’s back catalog because this is a fantastic collection of sounds. Combining percussion, cello, electronics, and field recordings with great wit and beauty, the album is also a miracle of multitracking, with Storrings playing upwards of 40 instruments to make it come to life. Inspired by a Brazil of both the mind and empirical experience, Mirante is an imaginary vacation of the highest order.
Boogarins on Audiotree Live This half-hour EP of explosive live-in-studio performances by Brazil’s greatest psych-rock band proves their spectacular powers once again. Including four songs from last year’s fantastic Bacúri and ending with what may be the definitive version of Infinu, a song I’ve been grooving to since 2014, this is the perfect place to start if you haven’t started yet.
Molto Ohm - FEED The debut album from the electronic-collage project of unclassifiable guitar adventurer Matteo Liberatore, FEED is your invitation to the rave where you dance on the bones of late capitalism while the DJ tries to sell you investment advice. Somewhere between Laurie Anderson and 100 Gecs, FEED will have you begging for molto Molto Ohm.
more eaze/claire rousay - no floor From moody, acoustic ruminations like album opener hopfields, to spooky ambient trips, like the pedal-steel driven limelight, illegally, there is an exquisite sense of balance throughout this latest collaboration from the tireless sonic explorers. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
LMNL - Rainbow A one-hour sonic collage anchored by a ghostly Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, this is a meditation on finding recognition through music. Created by Jerry Pergolesi, who plays percussion, trumpet and electronics, with contributions from Louise Campbell (clarinet and electronics), I’m also happy to note that Rainbow was mixed by Adam Francis Cuthbert AKA I-R, whose Detroit Densha Seikatsu was one of last year’s best albums.
SABA and No ID - From Private Collection I’m currently riding high in my Rap Chronicles Music League, but it took someone else to submit Saba’s Prom/King to the Storytelling Masterpieces round. This was the song from Care For Me, Saba’s fine 2018 album, that had me singing its praises as an “extraordinary use of hip hop as memoir” that “nearly singlehandedly reimagines the power and possibility of the music.” I voted for it, but my pick (Slick Rick’s Children’s Story) got more points. Saba’s next album was 2022’s Few Good Things, which was “full of heart, soul, anger, and humor, not to mention juicy beats.” Now we get this collection, which may be Saba’s best overall album yet. With No ID pumping out soulful rhythms and vocal decorations from Madison McFerrin, Ibeyi, Kelly Rowland, and more, Saba raps with compassion and passion about his life and the world. How to Impress God takes its place in hip-hop’s canon of “deity conversation” songs (another round for Music League?) with a chorus that describes the tension between faith and success: “I had a year full of tour dates/Last I checked I said I'd never go and change, and got dressed/It felt like I heard God say ‘I'm not impressed.’” That does not make two of us, Saba - this is an impressive collection for sure.