Freya Josephine Hollick’s brand-new album The Real World is out now through Cheersquad Records & Tapes.
After a tumultuous gestation, Freya Josephine Hollick delivers The Real World her most accomplished studio work to date, loaded with high rotation singles, soul bearing spirituality and an idiosyncratic take on the alternative country form.
Back in the before times, Freya travelled to the Californian desert to record at the famed studio Rancho de la Luna with Lucinda Williams’ band Buick 6 and renowned guitarist Greg Leisz (Eric Clapton, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris et al).The resulting sessions were brought back and then shaped with her Australian band through the ebbs, flows and challenges of the pandemic years.
“Nobody’s No Better Than No One” was the first taste of Hollick’s new work. Clad in cosmic desert dust, the single was heavily influenced by Gene Clark’s hallowed 1974 album No Other, it was added readily to Australian national radio and picked up a sync on the HBO TV drama The Flight Attendant. ‘Nobody’s No Better Than No One’ is an anthem for the underdog.
Next Freya issued “Impossible To Love”, a reclamation of sound and purpose. This short, sharp spark saw Freya embracing her youthful, raw outlaw heart, and national radio again embracing the new single with high rotation. Leaping forward with an electric country scratch, the artist looking to push the much-loved 70sinspired vibe into meaning for these complex times.
Freya returned with the title track “The Real World” which cries to the bleak situation we find our planet in. Once again scoring high rotation on national radio the song laments an earth sosick where, “the sky has turned to fire”. Aching and punctuated by her pure and fragile tone, the song orbits in an ether of sullen strings and bawling steel guitar.
“Vivian, June, Dolly and Jolene,” finds Freya knowingly dissecting the jealous heart of outlaw country folklore. With her diamond-sharp Australian band relishing the chance to shine on this one, Freya delivers at her most transcendent. In her aching quiver you can hear the very moment the poor heartbreaks, it’s hyper-real and breathtaking.
Written in the time of Trump, “Me and Mine” the 5th single to be lifted from the album fixes on fortitude in the face of political ineptitude. As how of strength from deep within a weathered heart, taking power from the commitment to the self-sufficiency of a community pressed under the thumb of authoritarian leadership.
Inspired by the late great Allen Toussaint, “Holdin’ on the Ones You Love” is a simple vision of utopia as worn lovers revel in homely familiarity. Freya’s breathy croon entwines with the smooth baritone of UK cowboy Alan Power, painting golden idyllic scenes while the band rolls on, pausing for an inspired nylon string and honky tonk piano break.
“Wilderness Tune” is an ethereal country ballad that floats on gull wings in the warm jet stream, free and spiralling up into the golden sunlit skies, it’s a fragile and tender moment among many others on a record that reveals the true depth and purity of an artist finding true voice and purpose.
The gas station torch balladry of “Spend Your Christmas With Rita” finds Buick 6 and Freya’s Australian band in full Honey drippers mode. Freya narrates the faded star story of Rita, a woman in charge of her destiny and in pointed refusal of the patriarchal dilemma.
“What A Tender Thing” closes the album and finds Freya in pure voice and heart, lilting against tender steel guitar and fingers sliding on strings passing from major to minor, and back home again. A warm embrace that tenderly whispers and then passes before the tears have a chance to roll down your cheeks.
