While touring with
Deerhunter in 2013, sculptor and musician
Lonnie Holley was put in touch with producer and singer/songwriter
Richard Swift, and they recorded a session together during a day off. Both artists were ecstatic with the results and felt a spiritual connection with each other, so they booked another session early in 2014, this time with guitarist
Marshall Ruffin and cellist
Ben Sollee joining them.
National Freedom, named after
Swift's studio, contains five songs written and recorded during these sessions, and like all of
Holley's music, it courses with spontaneous energy. The full-band songs are closer to low-down blues-rock than most of
Holley's other work, particularly opener "Crystal Doorknob," which trudges along as he growls about happening upon an elaborate door while hiking through a deep forest. The more ambitious "Like Hell Broke Away" can be described as dark psychedelic doo wop, as
Holley pleads to a lover who wants to throw him out, surrounded by multi-tracked howls and moans as well as swirling, levitating guitar licks. "Do T Rocker" contains a sense of rock & roll playfulness, with its lyrics evoking a dance and a banjo-plucked melody, but it ends up being unexpectedly haunting, as
Holley's voice sticks almost exclusively to a lower register, and the band seem like they're playing in front of an echoing void. The solo tracks recorded during the earlier session, lacking repetition and grounded rhythms, seem much freer and more absorbed in thought than the more produced ones. On "In It Too Deep,"
Holley ponders birth, earthly existence, and consciousness over the detached ringing of a thumb piano. The album's most intense, moving piece is the 11-minute closer "So Many Rivers (The First Time)." While similar to the profound improvisations of
Holley's first release, 2012's
Just Before Music, which featured his stream-of-consciousness musings over glimmering synthesizers, this recording marks the first time he had ever played a piano, having been scolded for touching one at church when he was a boy. He absolutely hammers the keys while wailing about the history of humanity from Biblical times to modern-day civil rights struggles, and it's one of the most inspired recordings he's ever made.