Oh Me Oh My - Lonnie Holley [CD]

'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.

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