$Jolie Holland + Inland Taipan \/ YES Basement, Manchester \/ Fri 12 Sep$

Jolie Holland (born September 11, 1976 at Houston, Texas) is an American singer and performer who combines elements of folk, traditional country, jazz, and blues.
Over the span of her career, Jolie Holland has knotted together a century of American song — jazz, blues, soul, rock and roll — into some stew that is impossible to categorise with any conventional critical terminology. This is her burden and her gift, to know all of these American songs of the last ten decades in her head and her heart, and to have to wrestle with their legacy. She dives straight to the pathos of a song the way the very greatest singers, singers like Mavis Staples, or Al Green, or Skip James, or Tom Waits do. Upon first encounter her songs seem challenging, perhaps unsettling at times, but as so many poets and rockers have shown us (from Dante Alighieri to William Blake to Sylvia Plath to Patti Smith to Nick Cave to Mark E. Smith) that’s where the beauty lies. As evident on her first recordings, Holland apparently has no fear of the truth, and there is no emotional core that she cannot reach in song. In fact she thrives on the red hot centre of a musical composition, in all its strange and brutal detail.
Local support comes from Inland Taipan. Inland Taipan is the pseudonym of Aisling Davis, a composer, writer, and interdisciplinary artist from the North of England whose work explores the intersections of art and science. Recently returned from a residency in the Arctic Circle, her songwriting gives nods to Bill Callahan, PJ Harvey, and Jenny Hval — blending lyricism with experimental textures. Her music incorporates field recordings made with hydrophones, DIY instruments, and environmental sound, creating immersive works that blur the boundaries between song, research, and sound art.
Price: £18.50 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/jolie-holland-2#info