Album Notes

TROUBLED TIMES is melancholic, beautiful, and as all encompassing as a womb filled with warm guitars, rumbling electric keyboards, and your occasional banjo.

Exploded old-standard songform populated with poetry hovering around the state-of-the-union. Politics, romance, who we are together, who we are alone. Who we are on TV. Who is writing this?

Mark Mardon of Bay Area Reporter describes: "[Holcombe] sings in his gorgeous, hauntingly plaintive voice, and plays bass, piano, drum machine, Wurlitzer, percussion, and some guitar. Adding to the instrumentation is Ben Landsverk, who plays most of the guitar parts and all the banjo licks. TROUBLED TIMES showcases a great young singer/songwriter... Holcombe uses vocals as deftly as any instrument, showing the marks of a classically trained musician. 'Literally the End of the World' is a wail, a cry, a plea, a confession: 'Put newspaper stacks wrapped on the curb as my offering, and shared the peace." (June 24, 2004)

Holcombe Waller is an independent artist living in San Francisco, California though by the time you read this he may be in Portland, New York, the Netherlands, or who knows where, following his muse. Some quotes from the people paid to know best:

"For melodic sweep, the prize goes to Holcombe Waller, whose self-released Extravagant Gesture is a small pop epic."-Ann Powers

"...Loverboy's got the crazy-beautiful, four-octave voice of an androgynous seraph...Waller renders songs of romantic holocaust with a nakedness that can't be taught and a vocal weirdness -- all tweaky phrasing and curlicues -- that can't be bought."-Kate Sullivan, SPIN Magazine

"Morrissey-inspired melodies with a soft, casual delivery caught between Peter Murphy and Jeff Buckely...His composition shares an affinity with Bjork in that it seems to come from some future place of greater sophistication, and clean, mirror-like sound."-Clay Steakley, Performing Songwriter