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Jolie Holland at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire, Montreal
Review and photos by Music Vice contributor Elizabeth Keith - November 5, 2008
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Gig/Concert: |
Jolie Holland with Herman Dune opening |
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Venue: |
Cabaret Juste Pour Rire, Montreal |
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Date: |
Ocober 30, 2008 |
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| Headliners: |
Jolie Holland |
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In one word: |
Mellow |
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Your say: |
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Despite me following the posted showtimes, I arrive promptly at nine only to discover I’ve missed most of Herman Dune’s set, catching only the last three songs, sadly. From what I can tell it was a pretty good set, a mellow display of folk and pop with the odd melancholy lyric thrown in. I’ll have to catch them at another show to give a better judgment of their performance, and I hope they come back soon.
The JPR Cabaret could easily become one of my favorite places to see live music – big enough to do justice to the large crowd that showed up this night and yet it never loses its intimate appeal. If you’ve ever been to the temple of hockey idolatry that is Flames Central in Calgary, it’s similar in structure but not in design – curved balconies and enough floor space for both standing room and lots of high tables with barstools. When former member of The Be Good Tanyas Jolie Holland takes the stage, the room is hushed and there’s really no space for the usual assholes to have their distracting conversations in the middle of a show (why bother showing up..?) so the crowd has the band all to itself, and vice versa.
In the studio, Holland is at her best when her music is stripped-down and simply produced, and this is what she and her band bring to the stage tonight. Holland’s voice sounds a bit extra husky tonight, perhaps influenced by the bottle of wine that only gets a rest at her feet during songs, and she sounds as if she just woke up in the middle of the afternoon when she asks the lighting techs to crank down the stagelights that are shining directly on her.
The music is a mix of folk, blues, quiet jazz and old country carried by Holland’s twangy warble with lyrics that evoke imagery from Dustbowl-era Americana through to Jack Kerouac’s wandering dharma bums. The band drifts like a burdened traveler through the set, hitting up one my favorites Old Fashioned Morphine, described in the liner notes of Escondida as “a bastard version of ‘old time religion’ and Willie Johnson’s ‘Keep your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.’” The night’s Southern Gothic mood stays mellow, almost melancholic, and keeps from straying into gloom even for Corrido Por Buddy, a memorial song for a friend of Holland’s that died of a drug addiction.
"...the interaction with the audience is pretty subdued without being distant."
Holland manages some shy banter between songs, and with the exception of her bassist telling a joke about two whales at a bar, the interaction with the audience is pretty subdued without being distant. At the end of the show the band quickly returns to the stage and Holland apologizes for “forgetting to play the goddamn single,” Mexico City, off her latest release The Living and the Dead. Soon it’s just Holland on the stage soliciting requests, then joined by her drummer and much to my utter joy Mad Tom of Bedlam ends up being the final song of the night. Mad Tom is a drum-and-vox jazz version of nearly 400-year-old lyrics of British origin, and as an uptempo ballad of murderous lunatics and faeries, it carries the evening to a fitting close.
© Elizabeth Keith
Jolie Holland - www.jolieholland.com
