Holly Golightly is a garage-rock Peggy Lee. With her uniquely restrained delivery and perfect sense of timing, she manages to pack a whole album's worth of emotion into just about every lyric. Tough, sometimes even menacing, Holly's ruthless when it comes to breakups, obsession and self-deception?all in rockin', rhyming couplets.
Formerly one of Thee Headcoatees, Billy Childish's all-girl backup band, Holly still plays garage rock, but of a depth and complexity sometimes missing from that genre. Her musical raw materials are Byrds-like harmonies, twanging or fuzzy guitars and an occasional Southern lilt, combined to make songs that are almost painfully right-on. Her latest release, Singles Round-Up (Damaged Goods), showcases all her singles and b-sides to date, including covers of Lee Hazlewood and Ike Turner and great versions of old standards like "No Big Thing" and "Lonesome Town."
We spoke to Holly by phone from London two weeks before she hit town for the CMJ Music Marathon and a few other shows.
Lisa LeeKing: Hello Holly, it's Lisa & Eva from New York Press.
Hello! Hang on, I'm on crutches. I have to hobble across the room.
Eva Neuberg: Do you have a broken leg?
No, it's a broken foot.
LL: What happened?
I got jumped on by a horse.
LL: Oh no. So what have you been up to music-wise?
I did some recording in January, and did a bit more three months back. These recordings are just gonna be singles, so there'll be a few new things out. I'm gonna probably put a single out myself.
EN: Have you ever done that before?
No, never, so I thought I would try that.
LL: Your speaking voice sounds a lot different than your singing voice.
Oh, is it? I have a very sore throat at the moment, on top of the broken foot.
EN: I wanted to ask about your songwriting process. Do the lyrics come to you first, or the music?
It works both ways. The lyrics mostly revolve around bass lines. Sometimes I play guitar and do it that way. Sometimes piano, too.
LL: You've been playing music now for a while, both in a band and as a solo artist, and it seems it's always kinda timeless music. How do you keep things fresh?
Oh, that's lovely. Probably just because I have lots of gaps in between [recording] I think. I get busy with other stuff and neglect it, then I write all the songs at once in a block. Then I ride horses for a year... I don't play often enough to be really tired of it.
EN: What're you doing when you're not doing music?
Riding horses, mainly. Well, training them for competition. I don't compete myself anymore.
LL: Your songs tend to be about heartbreak, lost love and sex, yet they don't come across as gloomy or sad, but very empowering. Is this a conscious thing?
I find I write those kinds of songs better, anyway. They come more naturally to me. I think it's what everyone sings about, really. I don't think it's anything special.
LL: I ask because there tend to be two kinds of lyrics, fictional and truthful. I was wondering if your lyrics are more a reflection of yourself or what you want your listeners to believe?
Well, again, it's both ways for me. It could be about something or it could be about nothing.
EN: I love your originals but I'm also really into your taste in covers, like you cover Bill Withers and a Stephen Malkmus song and Ike Turner...
Oh, "Your Love Is Mine." That's a good song. Have you heard the original?
EN: I haven't heard the original of that one but on God Don't Like It, you have "Use Me" on there and I have heard that...
These are songs that I know and I'm familiar with. It's fun to do something that you've been singing for years and years, and you know it really well. "Your Love Is Mine" is not all that different from the original.
LL: Is it true your mother named you after Audrey Hepburn's character in Breakfast at Tiffanys?
Yes, it's true.
EN: I want to talk to you about your look. On your albums you tend to wear pretty retro stuff that looks like it's from the late 50s and early 60s. Is that what you wear offstage?
These are clothes that when I have the opportunity to be wearing them, I am?but the majority of the time I spend wearing clothes to work with horse shit in [laughs]... I have a uniform for work.
I can pick a moment in time that I like. It could be just a cut that I like, or a fabric I like. I don't think it has anything to do with how old they are or how new they are?it's more about tailoring. I like good tailoring.
LL: You almost have a Southern accent on some of your songs, but you're English. Where did you grow up?
I'm from the south of England. Where I lived it was very expensive greenbelt around London. I was just interested in punk rock when I lived there. I was just desperate to get to London.
EN: How did you get into playing music?
That wasn't really the kind of scheme that I had going. It wasn't something that I aspired to do, particularly. It took me a long time to even enjoy singing live. I quite like recording, I got really into that?I got myself a four-track?I'd still be doing that, whether there were records or not, I'm sure.
EN: Why do you prefer recording?
I'm not very good at singing and playing at the same time. I mean, I can do it when I record. I get more out of it now than I did five years ago. But I still like lighting a fire and having a four-track roaring.
EN: Are you surprised at how popular you've become?
I really have no idea of how popular I've become, at all. Everything's relative, isn't it? I mean, you obviously liked it, and that's good. And other people that bother to get in touch with me, otherwise they wouldn't bother. That's good enough for me.
LL: What bands are hot in the UK right now?
Oh God, um...the Masonics.
EN: What kind of music do your horses like?
They like free music, free jazz. It's funny, I was talking about this last night, because I do play the radio a lot. If you play a bad soft rock station they won't hang their heads over the door and be interested. If you play anything easy on the ear, they just hang their heads over and fall asleep.
LL: Back to rock in the UK. What bands are making the scene?
God, all the obvious ones, I suppose. I don't know. I'm sure I don't have my finger on the pulse of interesting things going on. I like the Masonics with Liam, who engineered quite a few of my records. I've got another band called Beef Wellington that I quite like. I like the Country Teasers.
LL: Yeah for the Country Teasers.
EN: Are you looking forward to touring in the U.S. this fall?
Yeah, I am. It's more, it's gonna be more shows than I've had to do [in a row]. I just hope I don't get a sore throat. I haven't got any time off, it's all traveling and playing. I'm not really that used to doing it like that.
LL: What can we expect from your upcoming NYC area shows?
Probably at least two songs from each record.
EN: Wow, that's great. Some musicians won't play their old songs...
I do a combination and try to do something from every record. I don't practice all that often. So generally there's this standard format and then I'll add one or two things to that when we get a chance to run through the set.
Holly Golightly plays Fri., Sept. 14, at Maxwell's, 1039 Washington St. (11th St.), Hoboken, 201-653-1703. She also plays Sat., Sept. 15, at CBGB, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.), 982-4052, as part of the CMJ Music Marathon (cmj.com); and Sat., Sept. 29, at Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 260-4700.