Holcombe Waller’s warm, lyric tenor is a disorienting force:
Gliding across three (some say four) octaves, Waller’s voice glows with
a curiously organic absence of blemishes. But vocal virtuosity in
itself is as unimpressive as it is attention seeking: If American
Idol has demonstrated anything, it’s that the pursuit of a
classically ideal timbre often leads to a soulless approximation of
art, where beauty is replaced with manufactured technique. Waller’s
impossibly pure voice, however, is familiar and inviting, even though
he sounds like no other singer today.
Last January, Waller performed his ambitious operetta, Mihael
Sagalovesky and the Tragic Torments of Patty Townes, a theatrical
interpretation of Patty Griffin and Townes Van Zandt songs, refracted
through the Chekhovian prism of Waller’s fictional, drunken minstrel,
Mihael Sagalovesky. Props and minimal video projections lent narrative
cues to Sagalovesky’s story, but Waller’s alternately sotto and soaring
voice eclipsed all the dramatic trappings, and recast the folksy
ballads into ethereal, Gershwin-like shimmers.
Months later, at the Time-Based Art Festival, Waller debuted the
entirely transfixing Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest. He
had toned down the non-musical elements of his show, but retained just
enough to nudge it beyond a normal concert experience. Accompanied by
French horn, cello, viola, xylophone, banjo, and acoustic guitar,
Waller’s voice hushed the (literally) festive crowd, and unrolled a
devastating set of original songs, including “Little Wrecking Ball” and
“Eyes Like Knives.” Both songs proposed complex and sympathetic
psychological portraits of polarizing figures: the infant Jesus and an
abusive soldier, respectively.
Waller’s evocative, almost androgynous voice will always foreground
his creative output, but he has the vision of an artist, rather than a
vocalist. As such, he uses that beauty as a tool to establish an
emotional foothold with the audience, so that he can then unpack his
finely crafted and haunting sensibility.