LOTS HOLLOWAY – EP REVIEW

Lots Holloway – Slow Down EP 
Lots Holloway - Slow Down EP


Release Date: Out Now

Lots Holloway is a curious talent, she is at once populist in her pop melodies but also alternative and edgy in her arrangements. This makes her an appealing prospect on a commercial level but I don't really care about that, it's the creation of genuinely engaging music that gets me up in the morning. Opening with the title track, ‘Slow Down’, Holloway settles in to a wonderfully disorientating slice of slightly wonky alt-pop that has parallels with Florence + The Machine, the Raincoats, Sound of the Sirens and Feist. There is a plea for us all to slow down and the pure melody of the chorus is delicious in its simplicity.

On ‘Berry Bones’ we are treated to some excellent slap bass and again that pure vocal cuts through like a seasoned pro atop an 80s inspired beat that is somehow ultra-contemporary at the same time. The title ‘Love Me, Though I’m Not Right’ is as tantalising a prospect as the melody that feels as though it’s being played backwords but still works brilliantly. I can’t help but pigeonhole this as alt-pop but there’s so much more here – there’s experience and wisdom in the lyrics, creativity in the melodies and an edge to the beats, something I haven’t heard in this way since Kimbra’s early work.

Lots Holloway - a diva for our time
The EP closes up with ‘Between You and Me’, an acoustic confessional that displays the cracks and croaks in Holloway’s voice as she lets us in behind the production curtain to a very personal space. All the songs on this collection are superb but it is this closing salvo that has really stayed with me due to the power of the raw emotion in the vocals and the lyrics propelled only by early morning acoustic anger and the distant, subtle rumble of strings like the first fingers of sunlight creeping in under the curtains. If Lots Holloway lived in LA I think she’d have been snapped up by a major label by now but fortunately she doesn’t so we got to watch and hear her evolve at a more organic pace which is just fine by me.







Live Dates:

17th October – Ronnie Scotts, London

22nd October – Listen With Monger curates Blogtober @ The Finsbury, London w/Paul Armer + Mux + the Malthusian Trap + Bare Hunter 

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