The Living and the Dead

'The Living and the Dead' is quite simply a breakthrough - the album Jolie Holland's adoring fans have been waiting for. With a vocal style hailed by the Village Voice as "sultry and sweet, despairing and lonely", Jolie has experimented in the past with various settings for her unique, jazz-inflected voice. This time, working with collaborators like M. Ward (My Morning Jacket) and Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello), Ms. Holland has embraced both the rocking side of her roots heritage and the compositional possibilities of the recording studio, multi-tracking her voice extensively for the first time. The results have intensified the evocative moodiness that has always existed in Holland's music, but also brought out a rollicking looseness that serves her tales of love and loss perfectly.

On 'The Living and the Dead' the Texas-bred, San Francisco based singer-songwriter navigates a new rock approach built upon the folk, blues and jazz specters that populated her three critically acclaimed previous albums.