Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs - You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying 2007

Holly Golightly exists in that rarefied class of performers who are regarded as legends of prolific measure, but whose adoration is restricted to a small, devoted following. The fact that her followers (and collaborators) include the likes of Jack White and Dan Melchior doesn't hurt matters. Her recent song "There Is an End," a collaboration with Cincinnati, OH's the Greenhornes, was even included in the film Broken Flowers. However, being delightfully oblivious to the mainstream, Golightly has never altered her style or sound to appeal to a larger audience. In fact, she's stripped her sound down from her comparatively lush approximations of '60s girl group revelry and come up with a perfectly primitive bunch of songs for this 2007 release, You Can't Buy a Gun When You're Crying. Billed as the debut effort of Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, it's worth noting that, despite the pluralistic moniker, "the Brokeoffs" is actually a somewhat mysterious guy simply called Lawyer Dave, a one-man-band from Texas. The album is a barebones collections of duets culled from an eerie Americana backwater tradition that suits Golightly like a glove. Though they come from seemingly different worlds, the two singers mesh well, with Golightly's soft warble playing against Lawyer Dave's slurring drawl. There are elements of the haunted harmonies of the Carter Family in the mix, as well as traces of lonesome Delta twang, and Golightly's own otherworldly sensibility. At its best, the album sounds like leftovers from the cutting room floor of Alan Lomax. Built around a simple mantra of, "Ain't nobody gonna love me like the devil do," repeated infinitely by Golightly in her quavering, slightly nasal, Victoria Williams-esque little girl voice, "Devil Do" is an understated highlight. "Got me drunk on whisky/Drunk on wind/The lord don't like it/But the devil don't mind," sings Lawyer Dave during the cheeky verse of the backporch stomper. Later in the album comes the turn of the screw with the altered reprise "Jesus Don't Love Me," and among the highlights is the aching balladry of "Just Around the Bend": "When you were planning and dreaming/Of how you would leave in the end/But you didn't see this coming/From just around the bend," sings Golightly coyly. The song is a steady waltz that builds an eerie, almost murder ballad-esque tension as it twirls along. Golightly's knack for turns of phrase and unique story angles harkens back to her early colleague, Billy Childish. Though now, perhaps more than on previous efforts, she seems to be coming into a bit more of her own personality. Just as it's difficult to listen Thee Headcoatees without feeling a little like you're listening to a play of some sort, it's difficult to listen to this album without getting the impression that Golightly's still sort of acting, playing the role of this archaic Appalachian songstress. Fortunately, the role becomes her. AMG.

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Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs - All Her Fault 2014

British-born garage rock queen Holly Golightly has a long history of throwing down raw, scuffy recordings at a prolific rate, with some of her best albums being gorgeously unpolished classics that don't fuss with much more than the bare bones of rock & roll. The quick and dirty productions often captured an electric spontaneity and highlighted the various layers of humor, pathos, and gritty attitude in Golightly's one-of-a-kind voice. All Her Fault, the seventh full-length from Golightly and her partnerLawyer Dave (the sole member of "the Brokeoffs"), took a much different path, with the recording process stretching out over a series of many months, hindered by day jobs, summer thunderstorms, and intermittent power outages. While by no means overwrought or over-produced by almost anyone's standards, All Her Fault has a deeper refinement than most of Golightly's back catalog, with the heightened focus of the album giving it a somewhat more serious feel, even in its moments of lightheartedness or drunken blues-rock shambling. Stylistically, Golightly and Lawyer Dave have been tending more and more toward rollicking country-rock sounds for a while, and the 12 songs here infuse a little more rural folk-blues influence, going so far as to cover Richard M. Jones' stomping "Trouble in Mind." Songs like this, the lurching and murky "1234," and the barroom singalong of "Bless Your Heart" recall the same glorious haziness of rock & roll masterpiece Exile on Main St., where more stripped-down tunes like "The Best" highlight Golightly's eternally badass persona with sharp clarity. The album continues the trend of recent output from the duo, romping through honky tonk Western flavors like "Pistol Pete" and the occasional hint of punk blues like raging album opener "SLC," but there's something different about this record. Possibly the result of a protracted recording process, the album retains its rough edges while expanding the duo's sonic breadth. The darkness seems more dire and the fun moments feel more exciting and reckless, making All Her Fault a new chapter in a history of successes. AMG.

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