Bandcamp
The song cycle of Ali Holder’s new Garden of the Underworld EP winds through desolation and darkness into fraught and tentative rebirth. Her first new music since 2020’s Uncomfortable Truths confronts the dissolution of her marriage and emerges to find herself anew, mirrored against the myth of Persephone as Holder’s witchy gothic songwriting melds with Anaïs Mitchell drama. Holder’s voice carries a determined strength against the heavy deep strings of the EP, a slow unburdening of guilt and damages into a personal acceptance and revelation that blooms in the depths of her confessional hymns. – Doug Freeman
