Alexander Holmes

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Alexander Holmes’ story begins with a set dressing so perfect for a country song you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s fiction. Survey the scene: Holmes moves to West Virginia for love. A snow-flipped Jeep brings an engagement’s long-stewing tensions to an irreconcilable head. It’s over, and he’s left to nurse his wounds in a strange land. Cast your reckoning: for a songwriter, is this too good to be true?

But it’s fact – not all fact, Holmes admits, but steer clear of any songwriter that won’t. Holmes doesn’t yield to the temptation to traffic in country music’s ceaseless wars of authenticity – a good song can be truer than the truth, and Southland is full of them.

Two years on, you can still find the Tennessee-born Holmes in West Virginia, making a home out of happenstance. He’s doubling down, but it took a while – look to 2023’s Hollers, a collection of phone-recorded tunes that form an immediate document of his marooning, ashes still warm. Southland elaborates on and deepens that catharsis: conceived of in format as a hi-fi, Appalachian response to Nebraska, Southland is almost entirely composed of uninterrupted live takes – a rough-hewn, arresting set of performances showcasing Holmes’ ability to bend a line into an invitation to lean in.