In yesterday’s first installment of January Three Stars, you met Hello Tokyo. Today we’re covering local guitarist/singer Mike Holden, and tomorrow we’ll round things out with Ris Paul Ric (aka Chris Richards).
Mike Holden
We saw Mike Holden play this past Friday at Revolution Records, where he was promoting his EP, Level, alongside Sara Kryscio. His music is equal parts rock and folk. The guitar playing is mostly in the folk sphere, and his vocals are somewhere in between. And what side you may think he falls upon will depend on what you hear in his words: the lovelorn longing, or the introspective quietude of crooning; that love is a metaphor, a translation of what life is about. Of course, the folk-rock divide is an artifice of music criticism and we at DCist are, at times, music critics. Holden sounds great when he walks that line, like he did perfectly on “Drop the Other Shoe,” juxtaposing a failed love with sad, but not defeated pursuit of life (with sad and patient mediation on the life thereafter).
Though he’s been to Ireland only once, the land seems to hold a lot of experiences for him. He confessed he wrote “Help Me Sleep” at the kitchen table of a fellow musician’s mother’s house. “Help Me Sleep” is another song that justaxposes the mundane existence of life in the absence of love, and the concrete reality that a beloved’s body brings to a bed. On “Last Man Standing,” Holden’s voice wailed about the triumph, hinting at the fatigue and disappointment that may lie underneath. Holden’s love — when compared to the drama of something like Rubber Soul — is a peaceful fact of life. Love on Mike’s lips sounds drab and warm instead of superflous or hot, yet still conveys a depth. He closed with “I Do,” a song by the Irish musician he toured with, Paul Casey. It distracted with lyrical sleight of hand as the pattern and speed of the strum shift towards excitement. In the end, it left his voice behind, shook the guitar, and rode Mike’s hunched figure to the end.
This DCist would like to see Mike move in the direction of the cover he performed and “Last Man Standing”, varying strum patterns and vocal tones in a way those two songs show he is capable of doing. His quick absorption of musical technique (only picking up guitar after college) and influences points towards that growth.
