A British Rocker Goes to Georgia Holly Golightly, teamed up with a Texan, sings the blues
By John Jurgensen
March 26, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 50832.html
Singer Holly Golightly came onto the scene in the early 1990s, fronting a band called Thee Headcoatees and advancing a wave of raw three-chord rock in England. Her brash approach hasn't changed much—"I don't like touchy-feely music," she says—but her setting has. In 2008, Ms. Golightly (born Holly Golightly Smith) bought a six-acre parcel of land in Georgia, where she tends a brood of dogs, horses, geese and chickens. Recently she acquired a pair of goats. "We need to clear some scrub," she says.
Ms. Golightly's rural home, in a dry county 30 minutes from the music-centric city of Athens, shaped the sound of her new album. On the title track, the woozy country blues "Medicine County," she sings, "They got us at their mercy now and the whiskey's running out."
Ms. Golightly's band on the album and an upcoming tour is the Brokeoffs—comprised of one man, the Texas singer and multi-instrumentalist known as Lawyer Dave. In addition, he is the co-owner of the Georgia farm where the two musicians write separately, then converge to hash out the final form of the songs. "There are two ways to argue with her. Neither one works," Lawyer Dave says. Lyrics are a frequent sticking point. Lawyer Dave has "a lot less shame when it comes to the English language," he says. The duo has compiled a list of words and phrases that they have agreed not to sing, including "Florida" and "make love."
On the organ-and-reverb-soaked vamp "Forget It," Ms. Golightly sings with menace, "When you steal a heart that's true, be sure you know just what you do." Other songs, including the twangy duets "Murder In My Mind" and "Eyes in the Back of My Head," also explore the spiteful flipside of love. "It's kind of easier to do than the butterflies and the flowers," Ms. Golightly says. "The material is much more readily available."
She has had her share of musical partners. She made a cameo on the White Stripes' breakout album "Elephant" in 2003, and she contributed to the soundtrack of director Jim Jarmusch's 2005 film "Broken Flowers." But she says her most instructive collaborations were her first, amidst the punk-influenced scene led Billy Childish, a patriarch of British garage rock. Given a four-track recorder by friends, Ms. Golightly learned to simply "push record and play."
That DIY work ethic stuck with her more than any particular musical sound or style, she says. "When you've been part of a little movement in its own right, where not everybody is an expert and it doesn't really matter, you're more likely to flourish."