Jolie Holland: "Mexican Blue"

Jolie Holland’s sophomore album, Escondida, while arguably a step down from Catalpa, was an impressive little record. Holland showed an impressive flair and originality, building on her work with the Good Be Tanyas and moving her weirdo folk in new directions. On that record the quirkiness of her voice and strange vocal slips seemed apropos among the off-kilter arrangements. That doesn’t seem to be as much the case now.

On her third record, Springtime Can Kill You, Holland seems far more conservative, slipping rather painfully into more of a Beth Orton mold than continuing on as a sort of second-rate Joanna Newsom (that still makes you better than most people, at least in my book). This comes through all too clearly on “Mexican Blue,” the album's closing track. Holland, a native Texan, seems to fall off the ends of her words, leaving phrases truncated and more than a bit garbled. Now, that in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way she does it leaves it unclear if the problem is just a very thick accent or a total inability to maintain a note. As for the song itself, the arrangement is fine, if not particularly noteworthy; the lyrics are iffy but nothing offensive; the melody is pretty. At the end of the day, though, it’s nothing to get excited about, making it pretty representative of the album as a whole.