Scenestars Live! - Holly Cole - Returned Love - Plus Interview & MP3

Holly Cole had to leave home to discover it. At 18 she hightailed it out of Memphis and moved to Los Angeles. The former cheerleader and Cordova High graduate lucked out and was offered a job with Sony Pictures Entertainment in ad sales and eventually worked in the finance department. After growing up watching her brothers live out their rock and roll fantasies by being in bands, taking care of herself for the first time gave Cole the courage to begin to write her own music. It was in LA that she booked her first weekly gig at Coffee & Sympathy on Venice Beach and found her distinctive voice. Those experiences along with the ups and downs of past relationships have culminated in her first EP. Entitle Fearless & Free, it was released last week on Makeshift Music. A CD release party was held on Thursday the 24th at The Hitone.

"I was a writer before I was a musician" says Cole. "After high school I needed a place to get away to learn to be myself, I wanted to really just cutoff and go find myself I guess."

More than simply finding out whom she was, Cole seems to have figured out all of the different things she could be. She returned to Memphis after a year in LA to attend Memphis College of Art to study painting. Although she did not finish the program, the training did eventually come in handy as she has paid several musicians with paintings for their contributions in the studio, including cellist Jonathan Kirkscey and bassist Mark Stuart.

Influenced by the lyrical stylings of R.E.M and Aimee Mann, Cole's voice is reminiscent of Kristen Hersh of Throwing Muses fame, sometimes dark and forlorn but also lighthearted at times. The 6 songs on the EP display a wide array of styles from brooding folk rock to more twangy alt-country. The content of Cole's songs overflow with depth and color, while transporting the listener to the scene of the crime.

"I used to write strictly about relationships but that got kind of boring so now I write more about human nature" says Cole. "It's like with (R.E.M. song) Nightswimming, you know exactly what it feels like to be there when that song is happening. That's what I want my songs to be like. You know what that feeling is, you're there, and it's a visual style, not an abstract one."

This was not Cole's first foray into recording, but she feels like this time it finally happened the way it was supposed to. Scheduled for studio time 4 days after the Easley-McCain fire in 2005, she tends to look at the problems she has had to overcome in getting her career off the ground more as speed bumps than road blocks, and along the way she has met the people that have influenced her music the most, including JD Reager of Glossary and Unclaimed Recordings.

"JD has been such an influence on this record because he made the songs exactly the way that it sounded in my head" says Cole. "I feel like everything has happened for a reason, because I don't think I was really ready until now."

As for her move back to Memphis from the larger, more musically connected city of Los Angles, it's a move Cole says that she does not regret.

"I missed Memphis and something about it is just alluring, I think anyone that moves away misses it, it's enchanting" says Cole.









Holly Cole - Returned Love - MP3

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