More than a decade has passed since the ever-impressive Deborah Holland delivered her last full-length venture, because what followed 2013’s “Vancouver” was the “Fine, Thank You!” EP – but even that was back in 2020, and a couple of tracks the chanteuse issued with the temporarily reformed ANIMAL LOGIC two years later could hardly slake her followers’ appetite for new music. Fortunately, they won’t have to wait much longer now that Ms. Holland announced the release of an album titled “I Made It This Far” on March 5th.
Judging by the three pieces she shared on Bandcamp – “orphan songs” that the lady put out during the pandemic but decided to give away with pre-orders, songs that are not destined to appear on physical media – the record promises to be expectedly amazing, and if there seem to lurk a concept, there is a theme, indeed.
“The album was recorded in over a dozen studios in British Columbia, Greater Los Angeles and Florida, with me producing and Wendy Waldman and her son Abraham Parker mixing,” says Deborah. “I wrote these eleven new songs since moving to the Sunshine Coast, BC, so ‘East Porpoise Bay’ and ‘September’ deal with a topic I’ve been writing about since moving to Canada: the weather! There are also a couple co-writes with Dan Navarro who released one, ‘Circling The Drain,’ in 2022; it’s one of the pieces which – together with ’50 Year Reunions’ and the first single “Thankful’ – deal with being at a place in your life when you realize that more time has passed then what lies ahead, and you have to grab every bit of joy you can get. Many of the songs – including ‘Born With A Broken Heart’ and ‘Unfinished Business’ – are also about grappling with life choices, not all of which you are happy about but learning to accept them, and ‘Wildfires’ is a commentary on the destruction of the environment. None of these ‘reflections’ could have been written when I was younger.”
I Made It This Far
1. Thankful
2. A Long Time Ago
3. Circling The Drain
4. My Lifeline
5. Born With A Broken Heart
6. East Porpoise Bay
7. Unfinished Business
8. Everybody’s Drinking But Me
9. September
10. Wildfires
11. Fifty Year Reunions
digital-only bonus tracks:
12. You Need A Song
13. My Regrets
14. When You Were Young
