Pitchfork

Texan songstress Jolie Holland regularly wrangles comparisons to the Cowboy Junkies and Gillian Welch, but her more formidable likeness is homestate neo-powerhouse Norah Jones: No matter how boring or stupidly inconsequential Jones' records may be, Jones has proven herself one of the most unexpected new forces in pop, forgoing the seemingly predictable pop landscape in 2002 and single-handedly exposing a new, painfully untapped market of cocktail-partying music-buyers. Thus, witness the aftermath: Now, plucky Jolie Holland has to contend with a new, post-Jones landscape, wherein slow, salty coos have become alarmingly ubiquitous, and a female singing scrappy, country-tinged jazz is forever linked with a Borders-shopping, latte-drinking, Nantucket-summering herd of yuppies.

Like Jones, Holland produces her own records, and plays several instruments (guitar, piano, ukulele), but Holland also single-handedly scribes all of her own material, injecting a healthy bit of confessionalism into her lyrics (see Sascha's "I fell in love with a boy/ Who has a real life romance with a train") whereas Jones' quips tend to fall embarrassingly flat, each verse impossibly lifeless and smooth. This is, ultimately, where Holland exceeds most notably-- her vaguely gothic cautionary tales and lovelorn laments are always strikingly personal and passionately rendered, with traditional arrangements, heated narratives, and sprays of big Texas spark gently folded in.

Holland's pipes are dynamic enough to suit a variety of vocal styles, and Escondida, Holland's second full-length (and her first not culled from demos), boldly embraces an entire handful of tried American genres, her voice often flitting from country-rock twang to frantic crooner scats, or brazenly hopping from sultry, neo-beat jazz whispers (see repeated references to "Billy Burroughs") to benign singer/songwriter musing. Leaving little room for speculation, Holland repeatedly assures us that, yes, she can sing it-- and while self-diversifying is a perfectly acceptable (and sometimes glorious) approach to recording a fully realized, internally cohesive album, Holland's scope periodically makes Escondida appear non-committal and/or scattered. Thus, the record occasionally becomes the sonic equivalent of playing dress-up or signing up for seventeen youth sports leagues-- and there are only so many hat-changes an audience can faithfully endure.

But all fickleness aside, Escondida still offers a spooky, blues-driven platter of jazz-folk, with plenty of interesting-- if vaguely predictable-- melodic turns. The guitars-and-cymbals-only "Black Stars" is a spare and prickly incantation, while "Goodbye California", which sounds as though it's being sung by a woman with a rubber mouth, putters proudly, an epic road story. Holland refers to standout "Old Fashioned Morphine" as a "bastard hybrid" of Old Time Religion and Willie Johnson's take on "Wade in the Water" (Holland also includes a hilarious-if-ridiculous cautionary blurb in the liner notes: "I wrote this... in the midst of a meditation on the history of medicine. I'm certainly not encouraging anyone to fuck up their life"), but it's hard to dub the slithering, layered track anything but her very own.

Jolie Holland is well-armed to fight off detractors ready to dismiss her efforts as Jones-fallout, and perfectly equipped to counterattack all those currently assuming her songs are listless imitations of an already watery phenomenon. And while Holland will probably never see Jones-size success, she's still working out her own path-- and the end looks promising.