Working with some musical legends and renowned musicians (often both) can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you not only gain specific experience, but it means you have capabilities and are doing something right. On the other hand, when you have to go on your own and present your individually conceived music, it might be a burden if you are not able to come up with something that is at least above average.
That could have possibly been a burden for L.A. vocalist Holly Palmer, whose long list of artists she has worked with includes David Bowie, Gnarls Barkley, Seal, Michael Buble, Billy Preston and Dr. Dre. So far, Palmer has recorded three solo albums, with Metamorphosis being her fourth.
Whatever Palmer, who is also a vocologist (she has a degree in vocal science) did previously as a solo artist, it just might not make a difference, as on this album she seems to apply both her vocal abilities and her studies of vocal science to create music that is both experimental and utterly listenable at the same time. “Metamorphosis is an album about turning into the thing, the person, the force, the energy that you’ve been headed for all along”, Palmer says. “I thought my life was headed in one direction, and at a certain point, everything shifted and took on a different shape. That’s the ‘metamorphosis’ that this album embodies. That’s the ‘metamorphosis’ that this album is singing about”.
What does Palmer mean here? She presents a wordless set of vocal experiments and improvisations, accompanied by a group of brilliant instrumentalists, including the rhythm section of Mark Guiliana and Tim Lefebvre, who played on Bowie’s Blackstar album. The results are nothing less than thoroughly imaginative and mind-bending, and you can put any genre label you wish to describe it.
