Holly Golightly a straight-up kind of gal

A first look at her credentials and she seems pretty rock'n'roll. Holly Golightly sounds like a sort of garage-raised Nancy Sinatra with more vicious lyrics and an occasional dash of psychedelia. She manages herself, she produces her own records and freely admits she pretty much does what she wants to.

"I am a bad prospect for a major label," confesses the singer-songwriter who has recently been in the spotlight because of her work and close friendship with Jack and Meg of the White Stripes - she duets with them on It's True That We Love One Another on the Elephant album, adding another 10 points to her indie-rock credentials.

"That's because I'm not going to get rid of my band because they don't look like a boy band. And I'm not 20, and I don't want to do cool videos in my underwear," she declares.

Yet Golightly (yes, that's her real name and yes, she was called after the character in Breakfast At Tiffany's) reckons she's not all that wild or rock'n'roll. Golightly and band aren't a risk to hotel rooms.

"We usually end up fixing things," she laughs, "we're the kind of people who end up replacing the lightbulbs and screwing the shower rails back in.

Then again, maybe this is hardly surprising given Golightly's brand of retro-cool. She doesn't like TV, doesn't listen to the radio and only recently bought a mobile. "I'm not fashionable. I like what I like.

"Having the right pair of Levis is not going to make you a garage rock band," Golightly points out, in that definite-but-nice way of hers, "I suit what I do and it suits me."

Maybe that's because she was brought up by her grandparents on an isolated farm in the middle of the English countryside. Maybe it's because she discovered punk rock only when she moved to London.

That led, in 1991, to her becoming the singer for an all-girl garage group. After leaving them in 1995, her solo career involved another surprising twist. "I never envisaged music as a career. Nothing's strategic. I actually put out a record completely by chance. My music was on the end of a reel of tape. It was somebody else's session and there was some tape left so I used it up.

"When the record company heard it they didn't know who it was but they liked it."

Which just goes to show that when you don't try to do something it's bound to work out.

Thirteen albums, 10 years and many tours (mainly of America) later, she's still not trying too hard and her music is still attracting crowds.

After hovering just under the populist radar for so many years, she knows the White Stripes connection has had a lot to do with increasing media interest.

"Sometimes it seems strange that, with such a huge back catalogue people have only ever heard of that one song. But I think that however people get to you is all right. If it makes them take an album home just out of curiosity, then that's fine."

Golightly has always been curious about music. In her teens she would listen to lots of soul and then research records until she found the original of the original of some 60s favourite. "And you'd find that, oh my God, it was old Joe sitting on his porch with his guitar who first recorded that," she enthuses.

"Over the years I've managed to amass a huge record collection and that's made me appreciate things for what they are.

"A good song made in 1935, recorded with an acoustic guitar, is always a good song. Nothing is going to make it better.

The same philosophy informs her own music, which definitely has a strong retro influence. It sounds like something you've heard before, some old blues tune or soul singer, that you can't quite place. But somehow it's still being fresh and also oddly addictive.

"So instead of progressing I went backwards," Golightly jokes. "I have quite a traditional formula and they're all sing-a-long songs I guess, because a good simple song, well crafted, is worth its weight in gold. It's just what touches me.

"I think I'm quite a straight-up sort of person. "What you see is what you get - so this is the ideal outlet for me." 

Lowdown


WHO: Holly Golightly and her band.

WHEN: Live at the Kings Arms, Auckland, March 8; Bar Bodega, Wellington, March 10.

KEY ALBUMS: Slowly But Surely gets good reviews, and the album before, Truly She Is None Other, is also great. For a taster of what the concert will be like, check out Live At Gina's.