Jolie Holland - Wine Dark Sea [CD]

Wine Dark Sea yokes the New York underground to American song in a way that has rarely been attempted since White Light/White Heat by the Velvet Underground. Two drummers, sometimes as many as three or four electric guitars, horns of a sort that come out of free jazz and the No Wave scene as much as they come from soul music, and a refreshing need, on Holland's part, to sing out at the extreme of her range, above the squalling insatiable lullaby of the thing. Wine Dark Sea is the album of a lifetime, with a lifetime of work in it.