Reviews

Artist: Holly Lerski (& Angelou)
Album: Greetings From N.Y.
Label:Mangrove
Tracks: 8
Rating: ***
Contact:   www.hollylerski.com

Like a lot of people I've got into MySpace. One of the things that MySpace allows me to do is get out there and find artists and recordings that for many reasons passed me by in the last few years, or sometimes further back. Just such an artist is Holly Lerski, although, as it turns out, I did know a number of her tracks.
Her most recent release was a greatest hits/sampler package, "Greetings From N.Y."(£6), which covers Holly's recording career, including the time she spent in folk rockers, Angelou. The sampler was release back in 2004 and stretches back a further seven years to the debut ep "Hallelujah"
Why am I telling you this now? Well it looks like 2006 is going to be a very exciting one for Holly and her band, Jo Baker and Cath Evans. For a start, the band are going back in the studio to add a new album to their canon of work, five albums and about as many singles and a number of previous releases are due for repressing or are about to be made digitally available.
It's an impressive canon of work. Holly is able to move easily between tracks where the vocal is very solidly the focal point, "Hallelujah" and "Glittering Creatures", to more music driven tracks such as "Shipping News" similarly she's not an artists afraid to switch tempo. Moving from acoustic rock into faux accapella with ease. Holly has strength in her voice, but not at the expense of of delicate harmonies and touches.
"Greetings From N.Y." does it's job well. It's got me interested in Holly's back catalogue as well as getting me to lick my lips in anticipation of the new release. Hopefully it won't be too long before we feature the new album on the site.