Milk & Honey

Hollie Cook

By Natalie Silver

Hollie Cook’s chaste and whimsical voice glides over smirking, taunting reggae percussion with sharp jazzy accents—a unique juxtaposition of lightness and darkness that reflects a deep and unforgivable set of musical DNA.

She’s the daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and former vocalist and keyboardist of the British punk band The Slits. But her solo work is something else entirely. Her sweet, airy and angelic vocals flirt with the mischievous and swampy reggae in “Milk and Honey,” and tell you all need to know about the music she creates—it’s beautiful, it’s provocative, it’s complicated. 

Cook has one of those voices that could sing, as Randy Jackson would say, the phonebook, and still melt your ears. Tickling islandy beats and enchanting harmonies, the beauty of her voice, alone, hooks. And, as any true art does, its effortless mystique invites the consumer to delve deeper. 

“Milk and Honey” is a clever dance between Cook’s allure and a saxophone’s persistent tease. It’s a courtship between the two—a mystical and fantastical fairytale of a forbidden love between lust and apathy. Once trapped into the song, you inexplicably feel that there’s a bad guy out there. But we like him...and want him nonetheless. The song is enticing, warped and puzzling—a slow and seductive quest for answers to the dark underbelly of life’s sweet simplicities.

She’s the milk and she’s the honey; she’s a pure and special sweetness masking a hell of a lot more beneath it all. And as a listener and a fan, I’m still trying to figure it out.

May 3, 2019