Garage rock legend
Holly Golightly began her reign in the early '90s and spent the following decades churning out countless volumes of searing, attitude-heavy '60s-modeled big-beat rock & roll. Even the 11 years between 2004's
Slowly But Surely and 2015's
Slowtown Now! weren't signs of
Golightly slowing down, as the break from solo albums was spent producing upwards of eight albums with her side project
Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs. Her 11th proper solo album,
Do the Get Along, doesn't differ greatly from any other entry in her massive catalog, but that doesn't suggest stagnation in any way. With one of the more distinctive and expressive voices in garage rock,
Golightly sounds every bit at the top of her game as she has on the majority of her albums, leaning even harder on the smoky atmospheres and simmering scorned-lover narratives that mark some of her most electrifying work. Joined by longtime drummer Bruce Brand as well as a slick band of backing players,
Golightly slinks through slow burners like "I'm Your Loss," ominous rockers like "Obstacles," and
Kinks-y fuzz fests like "Pretty Clean." Some of
Do the Get Along's best moments arrive with the album's handful of cover songs.
Golightly's multi-tracked vocal harmonies transform the Knight Bros.' soul stomper "Love (Can't You Hear Me)" into a menacing girl group redux, and her reading of Steve King's "Satan Is Her Name" (pronouns switched here to "Satan Is His Name") reshapes the somewhat schmaltzy tune into something eerie and almost frightening. Throughout
Do the Get Along,
Golightly demonstrates her knack for restraint and effortless charisma. She breaks no new ground over these 12 songs, but in the case of an artist with this much mastery of her work, more of the same is happily welcomed. ~ Fred Thomas