In 1992, Robin Holcomb stunned the music community with her eponymously titled album, released on Elektra/Nonesuch records. Relatively obscure, Holcomb was best known for her compositions and improvisations as a pianist, and her association with the avant-garde and New York City’s downtown scene. The songs were in equal measure gorgeous, challenging, sophisticated, direct and mysterious. The lyrics spoke to the times like no other. As critic Ben Ratliff simply stated, Holcomb’s music is “staggeringly beautiful.”

At the time the term “Americana” barely existed, but to those in the know Holcomb’s music wrote the book – with a strange mingling of a long-lost agrarian tradition, and its intersection with the myriad contradictions of modern American life. Many artists have mined the vast repertoire of early American music, but few with such originality, poetic vision, and utterly unique harmonic language. As the Village Voice commented after her first release, “Satie goes to Appalachia, Morricone goes to the Knitting factory, and you, dear art-folk fan, die and go to heaven.”

After years of focusing primarily on her composing, her family, and her garden, Ms. Holcomb returned to the recording studio to record One Way or Another. “I wanted to revisit the past, and also make public more recent work, cover tunes, and various other projects.” The recordings offer a stark and intimate view of these masterful compositions, without production touches, orchestrations, or overdubs.

Holcomb spent four days at ShowGhost studio in Whitefish, Montana, with only her voice. a Steinway grand piano, and state of the art audio gear. Working with her husband - composer and producer Wayne Horvitz - they chose selections from her four previously released Nonesuch titles, plus compositions from two theater projects. The first, “The Utopia Project”, explored early 20th century experiments in collective living. The second, regarding the life of Rachel Carson, explores Carson’s public persona as a visionary envorinmentalist versus her desire for personal privacy, her battle with illness, and her struggles with personal identity.

Cast away everything empty,

You win every time in the end

Four letter words that were sent but unopened

I’m gonna lose again

In addition, a collection of cover tunes were recorded. In “I’ve Got that Feeling”, by Doc Pomus, Holcomb completely reimagines the harmony and rhythm, creating a powerful and unsentimental remake of the original. “Hard Times” with a lyric as prescient today as any in recent history, is treated for the 21st century as Charles Ives might have for the 20th, with a deeply moving and reconsidered harmonization of Stephen Foster’s original melody.

Almost 20 years ago the New York Times wrote, “The music that results is as elegantly simple as a Shaker quilt, and no less beautiful.” Today, with the release of “One Way or Another”, this proves more true than ever.

artists on “One Way or Another”

Old Dog Tray (Stephen Foster)

This Stephen Foster song Old Dog Tray, What a sad, sad song.
This beautiful music Robin Holcomb has made. Intimate. Sacred. Scared. Brave. Naked. Magic. Hope. Music. I’m really struggling now to find words…That’s nothing new for me, but in this case, I’m finding it even more difficult. My hope is that whatever I say here will encourage folks to LISTEN to what Robin is doing. Really LISTEN. I’ve never heard anything like it.
There’s no way for me to describe it …or…I don’t want to even try to talk about it.
I don’t want to break the spell. I’d just like to thank Robin for sharing this extraordinary gift. She’s always taken the road less traveled… the crooked path…or…she’s made her OWN path. Uncharted territory. Courageous. She brings back treasures. Revelations.
Where do these harmonies come from?
The past? The present? The future?
Have I heard this before? Not like this.
Everyone. Please LISTEN. Listen closely.
We need this.

Bill Frisell - Guitarist, Composer

I’m Gonna Lose Again

(single released August 9th, 2022)

“The songs in this collection are so beautiful, they create and conjure up the things flowers or trees might dream. They are connected and dance with each other. Coming out of the sky or swimming in a sea of sound. A revolutionary song concept also moves through the little stories that relate to all human beings. The lyrics don't repeat. They grow and reveal an inner world that has room for everyone. In the song I'm Gonna Lose Again, we hear phrases like, “the sky it is hot, and it's raining.” This music is a big winner for me from the first to the last song. An anthem to bring back our lost humanity. A map that guides us to the house of the sages.”

William Parker – Composer, Bassist

I’ve Got That Feeling (Doc Pomus)

(single released August 30, 2022)

“It would be an understatement to say that I think Robin Holcomb is one of the finest songwriters of her time. Although I am hardly without bias, I first admired Robin’s music as a composer of stunning instrumental miniatures, and in no way connected to my love of great American songwriters. And with all my admiration for Moss Hart or Hoagy Carmichael, it was the semantic shift in lyrics that defined my generation in the 60s and 70 - so clearly exemplified by Bob Dylan but so many others as well, and not just Lennon or Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen - but also the brilliance Sly Stone. Captain Beefheart, Prince and a generation later Elliott Smith. Lyrics are a deal breaker for me, and like Dylan, Robin’s lyrics mean something the same, and new, all at once - even after hundreds of listens. Over 30 years later, I still hear songs from her first record and find myself thinking, “Ah, I get it now.” Only to get it all over again the next time.

“So it’s really something to hear Robin cover a tune, and especially a tune like the single released yesterday. When Robin covers a Randy Newman song, or a Stephen Foster song, it may not be such a stretch, but what she creates with this song, “I’ve Got That Feeling”, by Doc Pomus, in nothing short of remarkable. Doc Pomus was a genius, but he was a Brill Building writer of radio friendly pop hits, meant for a teen audience with sentimental notions of love, loneliness, and sometimes fairy tale endings. What Charles Ives did for 19th century marches and village square hymns, Robin does for the teenage love song. It’s as if the song is turned inside out, upside down and turned on its head. The total change of harmony and rhythm reignites the lyric, she could have almost written it herself.

“The late Hal Wilner, his own kind of genius, deserves so much credit for trusting Robin on his many projects in homage to different artists. At Hal’s invitation, she was often the least famous person on stage, in the company of Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed and Bono and Elvis Costello and Martha Wainwright and many, many more. But as Hal said one morning, after a very long night, on the bus back to the airport in Dublin, “here comes Robin, the only one whose music always comes fully baked to these half-baked affairs”. Yes, Hal too had a way with words! We miss him.”

Wayne Horvitz – Composer and Producer

Electrical Storm

Her voice otherworldly, the settings at home in every sliver of genre and time. To say I was enchanted, as if by magic spell, is to underplay the earth and bone that anchors each delicate composition, its musical acumen. I remember listening to the work-in-progress in David Bither's office at Elektra, and then visiting Robin and Wayne in their home by the lake when this record was being made. To witness the unfolding. "Electrical Storm" haunts me to this day, as if waiting in an open field as thunder approaches from a distance, a human lightning rod, awaiting the flash of illumination.

Lenny Kaye - Guitarist Composer, Patti Smith Band