Lonnie Holley – Keeping a Record of It

To brand Keeping a Record of It, as early reviewers did, as the work of an “outsider artist” is to diminish the power, magical intent and singular vision that Alabama visual artist, poet and musician Lonnie Holley conjured on his second album. The 2013 record is unlike anything in your collection, a truth made obvious on its glorious opening song, “Six Space Shuttles and 144,000 Elephants.” Carried as if via magic carpet by a shimmering, upper-octave synth line, the song opens with (what else?) the sound of a shuttle launch before a simple Casio-esque drum pattern enters amid the furious liftoff. Holley, a vocal belter unafraid to push his range, enters with a tone-setting line — “A woman once asked me, why do I sing for the Queen?” — that propels the lyrics into the mystic. He sings of “Six space shuttles/The size of the Hindenburg and the Titanic/Both put together/Expandable, transformable/And solar adaptable” with the conviction of an awestruck eyewitness as that complex keyboard melody tings along. “Sun and Water,” a duet with Lillian Blades, is a lovely, and utterly singular, ode to the natural world.