{"id":413259,"date":"2026-01-16T14:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413259\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T14:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:09:08","slug":"jenny-on-holiday-quicksand-heart-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413259\/","title":{"rendered":"Jenny on Holiday: Quicksand Heart Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

On her debut solo album, Quicksand Heart, Jenny Hollingworth is hungry\u2014practically gluttonous\u2014for life. The English singer-songwriter is best known for her work in the darkly surreal duo Let\u2019s Eat Grandma<\/a>; here, she leans into childlike wonder and joy, pairing it with an \u201980s-inspired synth-pop palette. The album\u2019s closing track, power ballad \u201cAppetite,\u201d is even an ode to desire itself: \u201cI\u2019m chewing you up, chewing you up,\u201d she chants on the rousing coda, refusing to apologize for going after what she wants. It recalls the delicious sensory abundance of a Mary Oliver poem<\/a>: \u201cthere is no end\/…to the happiness your body\/is willing to bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollingworth\u2019s arrival at this joyful point was hard-won. She and her bandmate Rosa Walton rose to acclaim with whimsical albums that shapeshifted from SOPHIE<\/a>-produced, room-shaking pop to droning, distorted rock; for their third record, 2022\u2019s Two Ribbons<\/a>, the duo explored grief and the tension in their own relationship over more conventional song structures. Hollingworth\u2019s solo record comes after several personally difficult years, including losing her boyfriend to a rare form of bone cancer in 2019. Eventually, as Hollingworth explained to the Independent<\/a>, she felt ready to \u201chave more fun making music again,\u201d rather than try \u201cto sum up really traumatic parts of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Quicksand Heart, she continues on the path she and Walton set on Two Ribbons, leaving behind the band\u2019s more experimental elements and favoring the power of a 4\/4 pop song. She infuses her solo debut with nostalgia\u2014beginning with the album\u2019s cover, which shows Hollingworth adorned in her mother\u2019s wedding dress, an ecstatic scream reshaping her face. Channelling the \u201980s via Kate Bush<\/a> and Cyndi Lauper<\/a>, Hollingworth revels in rollicking choruses fit for shoulder pads. The shimmering, rapturous hook of the title track, for example, packs a euphoric punch, though the song slightly overworks the objects-as-organs imagery. She has a lighter lyrical touch on opening track \u201cGood Intentions,\u201d a would-be John Hughes movie outro, and the pulsating \u201cEvery Ounce of Me,\u201d an I-don’t-want-to-fall-in-love banger with synths brighter than the sun.<\/p>\n

After the opening flush of these songs, the record\u2019s remainder doesn\u2019t quite reach the same highs. Acoustic ballad \u201cGroundskeeping\u201d drags its feet, sluggish in comparison to preceding tracks. The nostalgic throughline can result in songs that sound too much like their influences, and each other\u2014like \u201cPacemaker,\u201d an existential mid-album cut that, while catchy, blends into the crowd. Even on her less compelling songs, though, Hollingworth still has a deft pen for hooks\u2014and a few sonic left turns inject adrenaline into the album, like the breakbeats and crusading electric guitar solo on \u201cDo You Still Believe in Me?\u201d<\/p>\n

The record\u2019s title points to its central theme: the engulfing, absorbing nature of desire. Perhaps the most accomplished illustration of this comes at the album\u2019s midpoint: the spare and spectral \u201cDolphins,\u201d which shows off Hollingworth\u2019s mastery of melding happiness and melancholy. Standing on the coast, she looks for dolphins, desperately wanting to meet the wordless gaze of an animal as she grapples with feelings of loss. \u201cIt\u2019s like the feeling you gave me, when you were around,\u201d she repeats in the outro, over her own looped vocals, a ghostly dolphin-mimicking synth, and the insistent swell of acoustic guitar. It\u2019s a simple, devastating line, and she wrings every drop of anger, sadness, nostalgia, and hope from it. Here, her grief is an engine for pleasure: an invitation to soak up everything the world has to offer.<\/p>\n

\"Jenny<\/a><\/p>\n

Jenny on Holiday: Quicksand Heart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On her debut solo album, Quicksand Heart, Jenny Hollingworth is hungry\u2014practically gluttonous\u2014for life. The English singer-songwriter is best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":{"0":"post-413259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}