Currently based in North Carolina, but having squared up to Nashville and worked up a decent-sized Lone Star state following, MALCOLM HOLCOMBE is a name I’ve been recommended with increasing frequency in recent years.
An Amazon.com search reveals he’s been working pretty much none stop since around 2005, so ‘To Drink The Rain’ comes in the wake of several critically-acclaimed albums. However, with no less than Lucinda Williams referring to him as “a rare find”, Holcombe’s new record is as good a place to start as any, especially as he’s brought a team of sympathetic and highly talented Country, Folk and bluegrass players with him to Austin to fashion a truly compelling collection of songs.
Let’s get the one reservation I have out of the way first. Holcombe’s voice will sort the wheat from the chaff very rapidly indeed. Personally, I’m growing to love it, but his ravaged gravel and moonshine growl is not for the faint-hearted and his scarred, deep throat of a vocal requires some acquisition. His website is not exactly overloaded with details, but looking at pictures of Holcombe, I doubt he’s much past 45, yet he sings like a cross between Mississippi John Hurt and late period Johnny Cash. He’s certainly an old soul in his skin, but if you persevere, I believe you’ll grow to love him, especially because the lyrical truisms he rasps his way through are well worth hearing.
The fact he recorded it in Austin hardly hurts the advance notices, but trail-blazing Texan troubadours like Guy Clark and the inimitable Townes Van Zandt are getting bandied round as comparisons and it’s not hard to hear why. Hard-boiled, but poetic songs like ‘Those Who Wander’ and ‘Where I Don’t Belong’ are gripping tales of the dispossessed and heartbroken, while the semi-spoken narration of ‘Comes The Blues’ (“LA, Chicago, San Antonio...another man has left you behind/ another woman cries for a sweeter taste of life/ but those days are gone, there’s sadness in your eyes”) is as blasted and world-weary as they come. It can’t help but recall a song like Van Zandt’s nihilistic classic ‘Nothin’’ and sounds as real as landing head-first on the concrete from three floors up.
Crucially, though, there’s enough light to temper the shade. The opening ‘One Leg at a Time’ is a jaunty, playful Country-blues souped up by bluegrass-style fiddling and a ragtime rhythm section. ‘Down In the Woods’ is a deceptively pretty waltz-time ballad, while – like Townes – Holcombe can also craft songs of drop-dead melancholy beauty like ‘Reckon To The Wind’ and ‘Becky’s Blessed’. Aided and abetted by producer Jared Tyler’s gorgeous dobro and his band’s sympathetic lightness of touch, the latter especially is an affecting ode to an unsung friend of the author’s and as mellow and sincere as they com.
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Built primarily around Jared Tyler (dobro, slide guitar), upright bassist Dave Roe, Luke Bulla’s fluid, Byron Berline-style fiddling and Bobby Kallus’ brushed drumming, Holcombe’s band provide a suitably potent, but restrained and largely acoustic backdrop. The sound seamlessly weaves Country with Blues and Folk with Bluegrass, but versatility is the watchword and while ‘To Drink The Rain’ is very much a Roots record, it also has space for the swaggering, low-riding grooves that form the spine of songs like the urban alienation tale ‘The Mighty City’ and the trick-turning survivor’s blues of the title track. Fittingly, it all culminates in some style, with ‘One Man Singin’’ possibly referring to Holcombe’s time as a knock-taking troubadour in Nashville (“I heard him singin’ in a local dive where the sun turns inside out”). Whether it’s definitively autobiographical is a matter for debate, but it’s as compelling as they come either way.
Americana’s highways aren’t so much lost as over-congested these days, but there’s always room for real class in any genre and Malcolm Holcombe is quite clearly a highly individual modern-day troubadour who deserves to be bumped to the front of the queue. Hitch a ride with him and see the darker side for yourself. It may not always be pretty, but it will certainly be vivid and memorable.
Malcolm Holcombe online
Malcolm Holcombe on Myspace
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