Dolls of Highland

Album review

Possessing a voice geared for rock & roll and an audacious approach to music to match, Kyle Craft channels elements of the blues, glam, and protest folk on his vibrant debut for Sub Pop. The Portland-based musician manages to capture the energy of a barroom band performance on Dolls of Highland, despite the fact that the vast majority of the album was performed and recorded by Craft alone during a return trip to his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. He's dedicated the album to the city and its trail of heartbreak, which provided the inspiration for Dolls of Highland (Highland being a neighborhood of Shreveport). Craft is an avid fan of Bob Dylan and David Bowie, the latter of whom motivated his interest in music, and the Dylan influence is apparent on "Balmorhea," right down to its impassioned harmonica. The tune opens with the lingering, rocked-out honky tonk of the preceding track, "Eye of a Hurricane," as they play into one another. Honky tonk or folk-rock, and whether singing about talking over a live band or quoting whispered propositions, Craft's robust caw stays in the mid- to high-volume range throughout. One of the more restrained songs, but only relatively speaking, is the sparser "Three Candles," which dials back drums to brushes and occasionally exposes acoustic guitar, but the vocals endure. In keeping with the rock-bar feel of the album, the ballad unfolds like a drinking song without a chorus. Elsewhere, with an implied hat tip to the Band's "The Weight," "Gloom Girl" visits country-rock, "Trinidad Beach (Before I Ride)" imagines a supergroup of the Beatles and Mott the Hoople, and Bowie glam informs "Berlin," in which Berlin is "the star of the dark burlesque show" ("All the ladies want to be her/And all the grown men want to cry"). Taken together, Craft delivers a fun and loose breakup album replete with colorful characters, memorable tunes, and an even more memorable vocal delivery -- a noteworthy debut.

© Marcy Donelson /TiVo