Image: Joanna Kosowska

Holly Mae And The Painted Room’s recent albums I Am Dark Sided (20119 and Turn Of Phrase (2010) can more than hold their own in comparison to any of your other folk-influenced favourites of the past few years, excellent stuff. Heart wrenching lyrics backed by beautiful passages of hushed, brushed drums, barely plucked banjos and mandolins, violin, piano and trumpets all playing their part for the star of the record, Holly Mae’s voice, stunning stuff.

Tonight playing alongside The Great Park this should be a cosy spring evening down in the Madame Claude basement, a not a bad way to start your weekend.

Here’s a couple of  songs from Turn Of Phrase:

And this is the video for We Are The Wild from I Am Dark Sided, directed by band members and sisters, Kathy and Sara Kwon:

Holly Mae & the Painted Room is a Berlin-based, California-bred acoustic Art Folk band and is comprised of Holly Mae Haddock, Kathy Kwon, Sara Kwon, and Molly McDonnell.  The group’s lyrically-oriented music and pre-polished sound plumb the personal and ring in harmonic resonance with the universal. Holly Mae draws inspiration from myths and
tragedies, children’s stories, outsider art, and science. Primary influences include Joni Mitchell, Neko Case, Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, Daniel Johnston, and Bonnie Prince Billy.

Holly Mae was raised on an organic farm on the California central coast. Her childhood was steeped in folk music and she started writing songs as a teen. She began playing out in the 1990s in the acoustic side of the riot grrrl scene, where she opened for Sleater-Kinney at the Goleta Women’s Festival, under the name La Sullen Teen in 1996.
After college, Holly Mae assembled an acoustic folk band, The Interludes, in 2005, and eventually formed Holly Mae and the Painted Room in 2007 in Detroit, Michigan. She performed at the Ypsilanti Songwriting Festival in 2008 and 2009, where she was honored as a Resident Local Songwriter two years in a row. Moving to Berlin in January 2010m Holly formed the current incarnation of Holly Mae and the Painted Room.

Reach out and touch somebody…

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