National Freedom

While touring with Deerhunter in 2013, sculptor and musician Lonnie Holley was put in touch with producer and singer/songwriter Richard Swift, and they recorded a session together during a day off. Both artists were ecstatic with the results and felt a spiritual connection with each other, so they booked another session early in 2014, this time with guitarist Marshall Ruffin and cellist Ben Sollee joining them. National Freedom, named after Swifts studio, contains five songs written and recorded during these sessions, and like all of Holleys music, it courses with spontaneous energy. The full-band songs are closer to low-down blues-rock than most of Holleys other work, particularly opener Crystal Doorknob, which trudges along as he growls about happening upon an elaborate door while hiking through a deep forest. The more ambitious Like Hell Broke Away can be described as dark psychedelic doo wop, as Holley pleads to a lover who wants to throw him out, surrounded by multi-tracked howls and moans as well as swirling, levitating guitar licks. Do T Rocker contains a sense of rock & roll playfulness, with its lyrics evoking a dance and a banjo-plucked melody, but it ends up being unexpectedly haunting, as Holleys voice sticks almost exclusively to a lower register, and the band seem like theyre playing in front of an echoing void. The solo tracks recorded during the earlier session, lacking repetition and grounded rhythms, seem much freer and more absorbed in thought than the more produced ones. On In It Too Deep, Holley ponders birth, earthly existence, and consciousness over the detached ringing of a thumb piano. The albums most intense, moving piece is the 11-minute closer So Many Rivers (The First Time). While similar to the profound improvisations of Holleys first release, 2012s Just Before Music, which featured his stream-of-consciousness musings over glimmering synthesizers, this recording marks the first time he had ever played a piano, having been scolded for touching one at church when he was a boy. He absolutely hammers the keys while wailing about the history of humanity from Biblical times to modern-day civil rights struggles, and its one of the most inspired recordings hes ever made. ~ Paul Simpson