This here's a gem. I'm a sucker for good singer/songwriter stuff. Especially when it's not derivative. Like the stuff Jeff Buckley did. Purely something internal...not something made to fit a genre-defined mold.
That's not to say there aren't influences here. The closest recent thing I've heard is that 20 Miles record. Because they both have a Delta rock fusion vibe going. But whereas Judah Bauer sounds like he's cribbing from a textbook on how to have soul, you can tell this Holder guy's just living it, opening his heart and dumping it onto wax.
There's a lot of fun stuff on the record. The bass is positively gooey, and the instrumentation on most tracks is a wonder. "Have Paint Will Travel" sounds, at first, like typical college radio fare, but if you stay with it and then crank it up like I'm doing right now, it's got this great running T. Rex-y squonk and then this super-cool echoey Boston-esque space guitar thing going and, damn, this is a really gorgeous piece of music. Hand-fucking made. Like the best cookies you'll ever eat. Why would you pick Chips Ahoy over this?
"Things You Love" and, especially, "Safety" have this post-modern death country sound that I dig...like when Cowboy Junkies covered "The Post"...totally that sound, and that's a good sound, and it's served lovingly. "Condition" starts out with attention-grabbing vocal distortion, and then plays out into a fun little rocker, but "Murmurs of Appreciation"s probably my favorite... Zipping up the trickery for just a few minutes and stapling Holder's voice to a guitar and a violin duet that's just so beautifully maudlin with a plucky-in-every-sense-of-the-word bridge. Mr. Holder, please tell this Bethany Mennemeyer person who's credited as the violin player in the liner notes that she totally made my night.
Some lyrical gems as well..."Now he's here/nursing his fear/of heights and fire"..."the glutton was neither consumed/nor destroyed/like a tornado taking the house/leaving the toys." In "Presidio," Holder alludes to his admiration for Cormac McCarthy and Tom Waits, but the thing I like about him is that he likes them enough not to try to lamely imitate their words or their music and instead forges forward on his own. This is a fiercely independent work, and I'd say you should keep an eye on this guy.
I honestly don't know what to put in this paragraph since it's normally the part where I'd say if you like "x you'd like him". Why don't you go over to his page, listen to the samples, and come up with your own similes?
-JOHN MARCHER
Music Morsels Review of This Was A Giant
Amarillo, Texas singer/songwriter Luke Holder shows an astonishing worldliness for someone so young. A solid band playing music toying with various edges of folk, rock, blues, Americana and even psychedelic is a great vehicle for Luke's passionate voice which conveys emotion in a subtle way. His words carry unique perspectives on life experiences and true feelings, making you think of legends like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Luke's music is so grippingly honest that he stands quite a distance from the posers in this genre.
Green Man Review of This Was A Giant
Luke Holder’s naked observations can amaze and teach us all. He is perceptive yet detached from all he sees. Luke has overcome the deceit in life, and ventures forth to make something out of his observations. With a keen eye and an even keener sense of the world, Holder is able to bend and twist what we see as reality into something more tangible, more complex but infinitely more understandable.
Holder tells stories, and he lets them unfold slowly. His laid-back folk-pop sound is a great setting, and he makes these stories come alive effortlessly, weaving in and out of different subject matters to form a patchwork quilt that speaks to you, asks you to run your fingers along it's stitches, to find the pathway to the centre of it all so that the entire story, every single word of it, is understood by the heart as well as the mind.
Not that Holder doesn't have help to tell his stories, his
back up band is incredible! With such a wide musical landscape inside Holders
head, and with his music and words written on paper, would it not be fitting
that a musical
landscape artist have the proper back up? I certainly think so. His band
consists of himself, Holder, on vocals, bass and drums, Skitz O'Fuel on rhythm
and slide guitars, Spike Bebb on guitar, Mick Feely and Jenks Whittenbur on
bass, John Lerma and Sprocket Hemson on drums, Bethany Hemmemeyer on violin and
Uzi Suafdart on piano. Holders band is a virtuoso package of word, song, rhythm
and story that gives itself over to the listener completely.
Holder has uncovered the tortured animal in "Of Heights
and Fire", stating: “The dark presses against the panes/the lazy man
dreams of other days/He never wanted to change/Lust bloomed like a weed or a
bruise/on his soul.”
Holder sees deep into the spirit, human and animal, chipping away at what is
really there. He believes that life is a miracle, and that creation is one as
well. He says: “The miracle lived to long to hatch/But long enough to know the
value.” This song confronts the cruelty that we place on others and on
ourselves.
In "Prayer" he strips life of its variety of disguises, and celebrates the enormous beauty and paradox of humanity. He states: “Say what they need to hear/That's what will last/Bring back their golden years/Remind them of their past/Give'em a good beat/So they can romance to it/if people like it/it's because they've bought it before/if people buy it/it's because they've heard it before.” Holder peels away the veneer that covers humanity, showing us, with a no holds barred attitude (that I found refreshing), what humanity has become or is quickly becoming. It's as if Holder is holding up a mirror for us to look into, to glance deep within ourselves. We have no choice but to confront the fake side of human nature.
He wraps the power of his poetry in intricately woven melodies that will appeal to those of us who are looking for something a little more complex than the traditional verse/chorus structure. The mind and voice that brings all of this to us are passionate, natural, various and inspiring. There is a place where the shadow meets the light. Where the darkness embraces the glow and all things opposite reside in the same space. This is where magic and mundane forge, where light and dark become one, where hate and love both fuel the same muse. This is where Luke Holder sits, weaving his story quilt, twisting it's fibres and forging the stuff of dreams.
Aiding and Abetting Review of penumbra
Luke Holder has a band behind him for most of this outing, and so these songs have a more organic sound than the last disc I heard. Holder has also let go just a bit more, bringing a nice, loose sound to his ragged roots style.
In particular, the guitars are just slung out, and this approach colors the songs quite well. The emotion trumps anything that might have been gained by perfect playing. And anyway, the rumbling guitars compliment Holder's rough vocals perfectly.
The songs themselves are just like before, stories told in a shorthand that isn't always easy to decipher. I'm not saying the lyrics themselves are complicated; they're not. But the ideas that lie behind them don't always make themselves known immediately.
Altogether better than the first album I heard, and that wasn't bad at all. Holder knows how to write, how to play and how to sing. He sounds like, well, Luke Holder, which is often the toughest thing to learn. Just waiting on the acclaim.
Music Critic Review of Playing for an Audience of Candles
Playing for an Audience of Intricacy
by: mark feldman
“What would life be without a few cracks?” muses this talented guitarist on the opening track to his new album. Indeed, imperfection seems to be a common theme in the songs of Luke Holder, whether it’s in the degeneration of a relationship going stale, the confessions of an immature college sophomore, the guilt of a criminal, or even the indulgences of an infatuated and tortured soul.
And he succeeds by an intelligent synthesis of emotion and music in a way that very few acoustic guitarist / songwriters can. Take the very first song, “Cracks” - an effortlessly catchy upbeat tune weaved around words like “Oblivious to the things that are going good / I can’t think straight but I thought someday I could / It’s like making a million dollars and bitching about the tax / what would life be without a few cracks?” Or the sudden shift from a minor to a major key in “Dark and Lovely” coupled with “He had never felt these emotions before / all together in a positive way.” Or the happy-go-lucky refrain of “Curbside Philosophy” - “Curbside philosophy of the anointed sophomore / I spend my time feeling better than all the freshmen / who have to do all the things I did before.” Or how about the Eddie Vedder-like wailing in “Impress Me” - “Just to get the taste of lust / and the taste of sin on your lips” as a violin hums steadily in the background?
He also succeeds by an ability to take a simple three or four chord progression and stretch it out into an epic beat poem like only a select few - think a punkish Bob Dylan, or more accurately a male and slightly subdued Ani DiFranco. “Curbside Philosophy” and “Feel Good” in particular both exhibit the DiFranco like twang, but with some added twists, like some haunting multi-tracked vocals, some fuzzbox guitar on the former, and some overly candid lyrics on the latter.
But Holder forges an identity of his own by being so versatile. In addition to the twang, there’s some beautiful confessional stuff going on here. “Impress Me,” “Heart and a Hammer” and “K in NYC” are as stellar and plaintive a trio of pleas from the heart as you’re going to find in today’s irony-filled music scene.
This is an extremely intricate, complex folk-rock album, in that it’s full of intelligent writing and playing from start to finish. If you do anything else while you listen to it you’ll probably miss something. Turn down the lights and play this one when you’re feeling introspective. If there’s any justice in the world, Luke Holder won’t be playing to an audience of candles for long.