Holly Lerski

Holly Lerski

Holly Lerski is a UK singer-songwriter born in 1969 and based in Norfolk. She is best known for her work with the folk rock band Angelou and for her solo recordings. She is born Holly Elmhirst and is an English singer-songwriter from London, later relocating to Norfolk as a child.

Early life and influences

Lerski grows up in a musical family. Her father is a sound engineer and former St Martins School of Art student, and both grandmothers are pianists; Marie Lloyd is also in the family line. She begins playing guitar at the age of six and starts writing songs when her family moves to Norfolk at the age of nine, after her toys are put into storage and she is left with only her guitar and a copy of the Beatles Complete book. After her parents divorce, she and her sister are brought up by their mother.

She plays bass and guitar in several bands during her teens and while studying at art school. After graduating, she joins a folk rock band and resumes writing and performing.

Angelou

Lerski forms Angelou in 1996 with school friend Jo Baker. The band records its first demo that winter, including a version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Local Norwich label Haven Records signs the group in early 1997 and plans the Hallelujah EP for a summer tour supporting Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine.

Angelou’s first album, Automiracles, appears in 1998. By then the band includes drummer Phil Di Palma. Lerski writes the album, which is recorded in ten days by producer Calum MacColl and features guest vocals from Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine. It draws comparisons with The Sundays’ debut album.

While You Were Sleeping follows in 2000. Lerski writes and produces it, and records it in studio downtime with Baker. The album ends with a tribute to Jeff Buckley, whose version of Hallelujah influences Lerski and with whom she corresponds.

In 2001 Spanish label El Diablo releases the Angelou compilation Midnight Witcheries, which brings the band to a wider European audience. The line-up at this point includes new drummer Cath Evans and bassist Anne Richardson. The band completes two long tours of Spain and appears on national television and radio there, then releases another EP and two videos.

After this success, Sanctuary Records offers Lerski a recording and publishing deal, which she signs at the end of 2001. Angelou then tours Scandinavia and Europe as a duo with blues musician John Hiatt and The Goners. For the third album, the band rehearses in a wooden hunting lodge in Derbyshire. Life Is Beautiful is recorded in Denmark and Manchester during 2002 and released under Lerski’s own name in 2003. It is a more pop-oriented record than the earlier albums.

Solo work and later activity

After disagreements with Sanctuary over promotion, Lerski leaves the label in 2004. She moves to Manchester and begins writing new material for release on her own imprint, the Laundry Label. The first release on that label is Greetings From N.Y., a best-of compilation of her and the band’s work to date. The record features a handwritten postcard from Jeff Buckley on the cover. BBC Radio 2’s Wake Up To Wogan supports the release, and the song More Than A Storm plays weekly on the programme.

By 2006, after Sanctuary is bought by Universal Music Group, she returns to Norwich and begins a new stage in her career. She plays her first solo date in New York’s Living Room in 2007. In the same week, Hallelujah is used in the final episode of CBS drama Close to Home. Her music also appears in the film Fish Without A Bicycle, starring Jenna Mattison and Brian Austin Green, and tracks from Life Is Beautiful appear on Starbucks in-store compilations.

Lerski continues to write songs and also works in painting and drawing. She later launches an ethical download store for Laundry Label and continues to perform and release music under that imprint.