Lonnie Holley Oh Me Oh My Vinyl LP Clear Blue Colour 2023

Tracklist:

1. Testing
2. I Am a Part of the Wonder
3. Oh Me Oh My
4. Earth Will Be There
5. Mount Meigs
6. Better Get That Crop in Soon
7. Kindness Will Follow Your Tears
8. None of Us Have But a Little While
9. If We Get Lost They Will Find Us
10. I Can't Hush
11. Future Children

'Oh Me Oh My' is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Lonnie Holley's harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point - his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But Holley's music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA's Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), there is both kinetic, shortwave funk that call to mind Brian Eno's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno's ambient works. But it's a tremendous achievement in sonics all its own.