Tonky (LP)

World-renowned artist and musician Lonnie Holley returns with his sixth studio album.

Tonky is produced by Jacknife Lee and features Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse), Angel Bat Dawid, Jesca Hoop, Mary Lattimore, Alabaster de Plume, Saul Williams, Billy Woods and more.

"The work of Lonnie Holley is, for me, a work of this kind of accumulation and close attention. The delight of finding a sound and pressing it up against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you. Tonky is an album that takes its name from a childhood nickname that was affixed to Holley when he lived a portion of his childhood life in a honky tonk. Lonnie Holley's life of survival and endurance is one that required - and no doubt still requires - a kind of invention. An invention that is also rich and present in Holley's songs, which are full and immersive on Tonky, an album that begins with its longest song, a nine-minute, exhaustive marathon of a tune called "Seeds," which begins with a single sparse sound and then expands. Chants, faint keys, strings, and atop it all, Holley's voice, not singing, but speaking plainly about working the earth when he was young, the violence he endured in the process of it all, going to bed bloodied and in pain from beatings. The song expands into a metaphor about place, about the failures of home, or anywhere meant to protect you not living up to what it sells itself to be, even if you tirelessly work at it, work on it, work to make something worthwhile of it." - Hanif Abdurrqib