Tim Holehouse Dave Hammond and Paul Foden

Tim Holehouse

The Mirror Crack’d

Dave Hammond and Paul Foden offer two perspectives on ‘Very’, a career-spanning ‘best of’ which closes one chapter and Clears the Way for Another.

Tim Holehouse is a very busy chap who loves touring, regularly clocking in excess of 200 gigs per year, so you can only imagine the effect the various lockdowns had on his mental health. However, being a resourceful chap, he decided to write his way out of the doldrums and, I am told he now has six albums of material ready to unleash on the world. However, before any of this is released, Tim has decided to close the chapter on his pre-lockdown career with a first ‘best of’, called ‘Very’. Despite most of his music have its roots in the Delta Blues, it’s a gloriously diverse album of 17 tracks covering his solo career to date.

‘Very’ starts off with a deftly picked acoustic in a Gothic Country Blues style called ‘All Hallows Eve’. Lyrically, it paints an eerie picture featuring skeletons dancing on graves, the dead rising, a murder of crows and creatures of the night. The following ‘Frank’ is an electric Blues played at breakneck pace with a mid-song burst of noise which precedes a further gathering of pace before the song implodes on itself. A personal favourite album of mine is 2019’s ‘Come’ and it’s represented here by ‘Numbers Game’, an acoustic strum with mournful cello and the irresistible lines “And we’ve all got an itch we’ve got to scratch, sometimes that itch will become an irritation, And that itch will become a rash, So I’ll keep playing the numbers game, Just to stop myself going insane”. It’s all delivered in a style that draws comparisons with Bill Callahan’s rich and conversational style. The next couple of tracks show the versatility in his singing with a growling Tom Waits-ian vocal over a shuffling acoustic blues on ‘Woman Got Evil’ while the rather emotive ‘Even’ has echoes of Nick Cave.

Tim’s guitar is prominent throughout and on ‘Judy’, as well as several other tracks, his slide guitar is well to the fore. For ‘Broken Bones’, the guitar is given a break allowing the track to be driven by a rhythm section of bass and percussive sounds that appear to made on found instruments and any suitably adjacent surfaces, along with a wandering accordion. The rustic sounding percussion continues on the next track, though this time backed by an increasingly threatening and repetitive guitar adding a little menace to proceedings. Lyrically, there’s plenty to mull over with a raw honesty that comes from within, often from a dark place, as on ‘Caught’ and ‘Twitch’, the latter being one of the more experimental sounding tracks with it’s treated drum sound and foreboding keyboards. The fuzzy guitar and guest vocal from rapper Babar Luck add to its uneasy edginess. A ramped up fuzzy guitar and manic vocal fill up every second of the smidge-under-a-minute ‘Freud’.

The album continues to throw in surprises during it’s last quarter, such

as the drone-like effects and seemingly random drum sound that appears half way through, or ‘Gainesville City Limits’, which sounds as close to a Springsteen rocker as Tim is ever likely to get, whether by accident or design. The final three tracks are all, fittingly - considering it’s his raison d’etre - recorded live, highlighting his ability to carry a song with just guitar and voice.

By Dave Hammond.

‘Very’ is a compilation which takes in mostly Bluesy tracks from Tim’s album output spanning 2010-20, every song painting a haunting and / or disturbing picture; the album, featuring a generous eighteen tracks, is a worthy introduction into the world of Tim. Even though the songs were written over a period of about ten years, this feels very much like a journey, arduous at times but, never the less, well worth the road trip. So, strap yourself in; it’s a bumpy ride and there’s no suspension on this jalopy!

Compilation opener ‘All Hallow’s Eve’ is a haunting slow trudge through a swamp to the crossroad, Robert Johnson style, with visions of the dead rising up and skeletons dancing on your rotting scrawny body etched into the mind’s eye. This is followed by a juxtaposing ‘Frank’, foot-stomping along as it gargles on razor blades. Third track, ‘Numbers Game’, is a drum and violin-led story ballad of the moving on with no regrets variety, but with an itch that still must be scratched, even though it is the seed of your destruction; restlessness personified. The slow and deep Delta Blues of ‘Woman Got Evil’ follows, and very involving it is too, pulling you in and slapping you in the face, you utter bastard! Fifth track ‘Even’ is another gritty ballad, this one about the human condition of fallibility, the distinct probability of fucking it all right up and losing those we love along the way. Deep stuff indeed! ‘Judy’ is about some chick that all the men in town want to do; stung by love, she (ab)uses them as much as they want to use her, not taking no shit from nobody, the sassy bitch!

Wallowing in melancholia, ‘Broken Bones’ tells a story of getting over life’s hard-fought battles, maintaining a will of independence; scarred, but defiant. The choppy beat of ‘Spirit’ carries the listener along a rocky road, looking for somewhere to rest your head for the night. Again, with a choppy rhythm, ‘Broke-Ass Blues’ tells of being skint, losing yo-wa wo-man with slide and bottleneck guitar (by the sound of it): Mississippi White Blues incarnate.

Featuring the Tourette Boys, ‘Caught’ involves catching a killer, examining vengeance and justice in a tense and haunting way, in some ways reminiscent of the ‘Murder Ballads’ album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

(1995). ‘Twitch’, featuring Babar Luck lending the track some Rap and an Electronic push, is a welcome diversion from the acoustic tunery which preceded. It’s another dark essay on the inner self. Driving bass, electric guitar, drums and shouty, gravelly vocals feature on the punchy ‘Freud’, propelling the track to its all-too-short conclusion. A longer version of this would have been welcome.

‘Unbroken Mantra’ again features the Tourette Boys in this slowly building, but suddenly-ending chunk. ‘Gainesville City Limits’ is one of Tim’s better-known songs, often performed live, which drives nicely along. Relationship issues, and what could be instead of what it is, seems to be the order of the day on ‘Makes No Sense At All Diane’, wishful and somewhat delusional as the end of the affair beckons.

Recorded live somewhere in the Netherlands, ‘Good Morning Mr. Vampire!’ is a gritty ballad about pushing yourself out of the door and meeting life head-on, whilst ‘On the Roads’ is about finding home, and your place in this world, after spending a lifetime searching for it.

I found this compilation, on first listen, a bit of a tough task as it’s not within my usual sphere, but it certainly grew on me with each subsequent listen, finding many parallels within myself, although it would be a stretch to say on a more spiritual level. Yes, this is a sometimes-tortuous quest into the inner self, with all its failings, delusions, stark reality and, not least, defiance, holding up a mirror up to the listener’s face.

By Paul Foden.

‘Very’ is out now on Aaahh!!! Real Records.

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