"I don't like Robert Johnson," Jolie Holland says, "but I've got an awesome live recording of [singer-songwriter] Entrance doing "Love In Vain." His version goes, "When the train left the station, there were two lights on behind/the blue light was the blues and the red light was my mind/is all my love in vain?"

It's a nice coincidence, then, that when writing notes on her third album, Springtime Can Kill You, Holland was on a train. What she wrote, in fact (her aversion to Johnson aside), is as unvarnished and poetic as that song. As well, it's a consummately eloquent sketch of the record and through-line for this bio.

She writes: This baby is the picture of a lovesick, convoluted mind. Sometimes my voice is as a lusty young woman, sometimes an adoring friend, sometimes a tormented soul, sometimes a whispering ghost.

Just as with her lauded 2003 basement-tapes, Catalpa, and 2004's studio debut Escondida, Holland writes with a soft focus and a sharp edge (and sometimes vice-versa). Springtime Can Kill You takes this approach to a transcendent level. Holland's sepia-toned song noir and billowy voice are in rare form as she weaves ethereal tales at a crossroads where haunting meets joyful—hers is a voice from the heavens singing stories of the underworld. The songs rise and fall like heavy eyelids and convey the peace of a place between asleep and awake. Sounds from past and present-tense waltz together to a never-ending melody that flickers between folk, jazz, blues and pop as Holland's characters and situations play on surrealistic celluloid.

We return to Holland's notes: …The hallucinations keep emphasizing the meanings of birdsong, moonshine, crazy dreams and the profusions of spring. There are open doors onto isolated county roads. Echoes of Memphis Minnie's "Homesick Blues," of Freakwater's "My Old Drunk Friend," Jimmie Rodgers pining for love. This is a pilgrim's progress through the haunted season of lust.

The lilting "Crush in the Ghetto" is the birdsong, Holland cooing about a new love ("I'm flirting with the birds, I'm talking to the weeds, look what you've done to me"). "Moonshiner" is a countrified, sultry appeal ("You got that good hard stuff that always gets me high"). "Crazy Dreams," written by Holland's friend C.R. Avery, has Holland trapped and tormented ("caught in the thistle, someone stumped on my pride") in a troublesome trance.

"Springtime Can Kill You" is the sum of those songs, blending bliss, lust and torment into a creepy-beautiful, Jarmuschian reverie. Holland, singing as if deceased, warns there's no time to smell the roses ("you don't have the time for the least hesitation"). Though existential at first blush, it's a coy, sultry, spectral, even baleful tune where death is a metaphor for the black aftermath of rent love. "It's just about being fucked-up, heartbroken and burnt," says Holland.

This is the first time she wrote songs specifically for an album as well as a band. "I even wrote myself out of a few songs, so I could work solely as a singer." She says allowing her band members to stretch their legs, particularly with guitarist Brian Miller (co-writer of "Crush in the Ghetto" and the title track), helped her focus more on each song's essence. Consequently, Springtime Can Kill You's rich tones swirl through Holland's unique storytelling to create a departure from reality, a reminder of the beauty humans can create.

In her words: Most of the stories and words are mine, but there are a few instances in which I let other people's songs tell the story because my voice is one of millions, just a tiny drop in an ocean of love songs…

Holland produced Springtime Can Kill You with friend Lemon DeGeorge at two studios in Holland's home base of San Francisco. Most of the tracking was done at John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone (where Holland and her band indulged in its array of vintage gear) and a few mix sessions and some overdubbing occurred at the venerated Hyde Street Studios (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Son Volt, Chris Whitley). Many tracks were recorded live to tape—and a few of these were tracked before an audience of Holland's friends.

Springtime is a remarkable statement for an entirely self-trained singer-songwriter whose first dalliance with music was with a toy piano (a harbinger of her love for classic instrumentation) and whose musical identity manifested while playing itinerant songwriter throughout the South. It bears both the rustic grain of her work with the Be-Good Tanyas (which she co-founded and departed after their debut album, Blue Horse—a subject she confronts on "Mexican Blue") and the self-reliance of Catalpa, her much-adored debut. As well, it expands on the not-so-hidden charms of Escondida, which earned raves from the press and fans like Tom Waits.

Holland will preview tracks from Springtime Can Kill You at several pre-tour warm up shows among those will be two at Largo in Los Angeles, April 5th and 26th . She'll follow these with tours of North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand throughout 2006. Along the way she'll continue her genre-hopping guest appearances, which last year included an onstage turn with hip-hop artist Sage Francis and singing on Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin's upcoming solo album.

But right now Holland's thoughts remain with Springtime Can Kill You. In particular, its haunted lust, true adoration, gentle torment and persistent whispers and how, in concert, they ask the same question: is all her love in vain? In her notes, Holland's parting thought answers "yes":

We are all lovers, and every heart can break. And springtime is always a beautiful minefield strewn with honeysuckle and thorny roses.