Music Review: Holly Golightly, Slowtown Now!

By Melissa Bratcher

The new Holly Golightly album, Slowtown Now! is a complete delight from start to finish. There’s a relaxed affability and a charming retro-ness to the songs, and Golightly’s voice is wonderful. She sings with an ease and grace, clearly enjoying the material, which ranges from girl group harmonies, to smart jazz, to throwback garage rock. It’s such a fun album and compulsively listenable.

Holly Golightly hasn’t released a full band record since 2004, with Slowly But Surely. Instead, she’s been working with her partner Lawyer Dave as Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, making a looser, rootsy sort of music, drawing from country/blues/Americana influences. Slowtown Now! is quite a departure from that, and Holly Golightly handles the transition deftly.

There’s not a bad track on Slowtown Now! Holly says, “There’s nothing contrived, it’s just a bunch of friends who love playing together,” and it’s apparent in the results. The swaggering “Stopped My Heart” benefits from the twin guitars of Ed Deegan and Bradley Burgess, turning out a gritty, dirty sound that propels the 1960s garage stomper. The honky tonkesque guitar solo of “When I Wake” is a smart addition to the Wall of Sound homage, replete with gorgeous Ronettes-like harmonies.

The sugar sweet fingerprints of girl groups are all over Slowtown Now! “Fool Fool Fool” has that throwback feel, with jangly, grungy guitar. Holly Golightly’s voice is a wonderfully expressive treasure here. On “What You See,” a song seemingly written to do the frug to, her harmonies are painfully lovely. Bruce Brand’s drumming on the track is quite fine, catching the loping groove with understated, well-placed fills. “As You Go Down” could be a lost Popcorn Girls track, a bass propelled dance floor filler with a surfy guitar solo.

Bassist Matt Radford is prominently featured on “Empty Space,” a jazzy number with the longest Clearmountain Pause ever. I thought the song was oddly short, the pause was so long. It’s brilliant, and Holly Golightly’s vocals are easy velvet in the ears. Guest trombonist George Simmonds leads the jazz-inflected, utterly lovely “Frozen In Time.”

Slowtown Now! dabbles in exotica, as well, with the sly slink of “Seven Wonders,” which has a keen rockabilly guitar solo. The witchy, swoony, “Catch Your Fall” is boosted by tight drumming and reverb-laden guitar.

With 12 compact tracks that clock in around three minutes each (save for “Catch Your Fall” which is four minutes of goodness) Slowtown Now! goes by much too quickly. It’s a quirky album with catchy songs and an abiding sense of fun.

Slowtown Now! was released on September 11 via Damaged Goods.