Jolie Holland and The Grand Chandeliers – Pint Of Blood – Anti - ?? - ***

On her 2003 debut Catalpa, Jolie Holland's simplistic guitar and mellifluous vocal suggested she'd just wandered down from some Appalachian peak. Eight years later her fifth album's opener All Those Girls chugs out in a more standard country rock milieu and her voice has dropped a few octaves.

Holland still sings, delightfully, like she's chewing her vowels through a mouthful of squidgy windfalls, and Pint Of Blood's performances, even though some tunes tend towards safer ground, are characterised by a weird and artful sloppiness, distinguishing her work from the greater mass of back porch troubadours.

(26/6/11)