Jenny Hollingworth, half of the critically acclaimed Norfolk-hailing electronic music duo Let’s Eat Grandma, is ready for a new chapter. After releasing their extraordinary album Two Ribbons on the subject of friendship and deterioration in 2022, L.E.G. began an ongoing hiatus (or holiday) in order to pursue careers as solo artists. Rosa Walton saw huge success with the release of her track ‘I Really Want To Stay At Your House’ for the video game Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, but neither part of L.E.G. has put out a full-length project until now. Jenny Hollingworth’s debut solo album Quicksand Heart, released via Transgressive Records under the moniker Jenny on Holiday, marks the first LP from this innovative duo since their remarkable farewell on Two Ribbons.
Quicksand Heart is a record focused on the emotional landscape of life post-grief, post-recovery, when joy becomes visible on the horizon and things that once felt indulgent become real again. If Two Ribbons is about endings, Quicksand Heart is about learning to reset. Hollingworth is not afraid of the precarity of happiness: if anything, it propels her to feel more intensely, love more deeply, to be more present. The whole record is bathed in this feeling that things could, and probably will, come crashing down at any second; in which case, we may as well enjoy ourselves. “If we’re damned to find / we were screwed from the start, / let’s go dancing tonight / to spite them all”.
It’s a more traditional pop album than those released by L.E.G., but Hollingworth is well aware of this and it suits the subject matter. Part of the record’s appeal is its challenge, from the artist to herself, to be unashamed and unguarded in her music. She’s not pandering to those who might be expecting the whirlwind, left-field electronics of L.E.G.’s I’m All Ears; in some ways, she’s continuing along the trajectory set by the duo’s second and third albums. When she dares to be vulnerable, to ask for help, the music flies. ‘Do You Still Believe In Me?’ is an embarrassing question to ask at the best of times, but on this record, backed by a breakbeat, it’s a high-energy dance track that dares to rely on someone else.
Hollingworth’s songwriting is as powerful as ever: the album’s highlights spring from her natural ability to spin a song out of a single image, notably on ‘Dolphins’ and ‘Groundskeeping’. The imagery on ‘Dolphins’ is effortless and simple, in a way that might feel contrived from a different artist but in this case literally gives you chills every time. Her yearning to see dolphins “soaring high” is painted beautifully by her vocals, and is made all the more poignant by the song’s midway reveal that her longing for connection with non-human entities is linked to the loss of a loved one. Occasionally the metaphors feel slightly laboured: Pacemaker is a somewhat stretched reference to hearts as set out in the title of the album. Her ideas feel most natural when they are fragmented and leave something to the imagination.
The record does lose pace on a couple of tracks and there are moments of monotony, but it’s overwhelmingly inviting and listenable, bolstered by high-quality production and Hollingworth’s blistering intelligence. Beyond all this, it’s an album so deeply injected with joie de vivre that it’s well worth a listen simply to feel the connection with life that Jenny has rekindled over the course of writing it.
A euphoric listening experience, weird enough to be interesting but firmly set in the realm of pop music, Quicksand Heart does not disappoint as a follow-up to L.E.G. ‘s acclaimed discography. Fingers crossed the quicksand yields further offerings from this singular, tirelessly inventive young artist.
