Tonky is an album whose big heart matches its lush palette, which emphasizes rumbling rhythms, layered beats, and familiar instruments abraded to sound almost but not quite unrecognizable. Jacknife Lee returns to produce and perform on these songs, and there are moments when the music feels a little too produced, a little too polished and programmed, lacking that sense of the handmade that has always defined Holley’s sculpture and music. To his credit, however, Lee corrals the large cast of collaborators by showcasing their contributions but never letting them obscure the man doing all the remembering.
Holley has never been merely a folk artist, or a gospel artist, or a blues or pop or soul or any other kind of genre artist. So it’s fitting that Lee helps Holley incorporate all of these styles and more into the music, as though he is constantly recollecting songs from his own life. Adopting the cadence of an old preacher at the beginning of “The Same Stars,” Holley quotes Matthew 11:15 (“Whoever has ears, let them hear”) before settling into his musical sermon. “What’s Going On” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” treat hits by Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke as secular hymns, although neither is a cover. They’re not even sequels, more like threads that Holley weaves into a new tapestry.
Tonky sounds like his most intimately collaborative album, with many of the guests—including Angel Bat Dawid and Alabaster DePlume—connected to the current jazz and improvisational scenes. What’s remarkable is how wide a net Holley and Lee cast. Maybe it’s a sign of his broad appeal or the importance of the work he’s creating, but there’s something like fellowship in these songs, a sense of remembering together. Mary Lattimore’s harp creates water droplets on “Life” that sound like rain or tears, underscoring the sublime quality of Holley’s philosophy of love as the basic matter that comprises our reality. Dawid’s clarinet ripples throughout “The Burden (I Turned Nothing Into Something),” complementing his voice so beautifully you wish they’d do an entire album together. Featuring Isaac Brock on vocals and some clattering percussion that recalls ‘80s Tom Waits, “What’s Going On?” brings out a wild quality in Holley’s voice, as though his outrage has pushed all reason aside.
The difficult labor of remembering allows Holley to erase time, to bring both his own personal past and our collective history into the present moment, which lends weight to his testimony. “As I grow older, I can see that it’s been the same stars,” he sings on “The Same Stars,” a multigenerational collaboration that features the 75-year-old Holley, the 82-year-old sculptor Joe Minter, and the 44-year-old emcee Open Mike Eagle. The same stars that shone on his African ancestors boarding ships to the New World shone on him when he was born and are still shining now that he’s an old man. It’s a small epiphany that connects him with his people, and he revisits the idea on “Those Stars Are Still Shining” and finds comfort in their light. As Saul Williams declares on that song, “Even in the midst of the purest darkness, we are there, illuminated.” Reveling in that simple idea and the songs it inspires is another way of turning his thoughts to gold.
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