The Living and the Dead is a gorgeous triumph for Jolie Holland, but she still battles insecurity

For reasons that have everything to do with the demon within, Jolie Holland doesn't hear an artist hitting a high-water mark when she listens to The Living and the Dead. Instead, the 32-year-old Texas-born nomad zeroes in on the heavy hitters who, along with producer Shahzad Ismaily, are partly responsible for making her third studio album one of the year's most gorgeous triumphs.

"What I hear is the beautiful musicians on the record," Holland says, on the line from Portland, Oregon, where members of her touring band reside. "I hear the Marc Ribot solo on ‘Palmyra' and it totally blows my mind. The beautiful textures of M. Ward on ‘Mexico City', where he's playing pretty much all the guitars. I'll listen to ‘Fox in Its Hole' and think about the lyrical percussion that Shahzad is playing. That's kind of what it is for me on my records-I think about other people."

Tellingly, Holland seems unable to process the fact that she's the real star of The Living and the Dead, which in no way diminishes the contributions of collaborators like Ward and long-time Tom Waits sideman Ribot. That won't surprise those who have followed her career since the release of her 2003 bedroom-session debut, Catalpa. Over the course of the past half-decade, Holland has been acclaimed as a true visionary, an artist whose major fanboys range from hip-hop oddball Sage Francis to legendary iconoclast Waits. But even as the critics have gushed, with 2006's breakthrough Springtime Can Kill You making more than one top-10 list, the singer has had trouble believing her own press.

For that, you can blame what she calls "the demon". Like many of us (whether we admit it or not), Holland often finds herself at war with the self-doubting monster within. And, like many of us, there are days when that monster goes on the kind of rampage from which the only escape is reaching for the bottle or curling up in the fetal position.

"My friends tell me all the time, ‘No fucking way, no fucking way—you are not thinking that,' " Holland says. "So, yeah, I have friends who are definitely blown away at how insecure I am. Because of that, it [the praise] doesn't affect me. The demon doesn't speak that language. It can be eating my guts, and it's like you might as well be yelling ‘Stop' at it in German. It's like, ‘What? Bon appétit.' So that Tom Waits likes my music—I can't digest that. I still get really bummed out by dumb shit."

Holland has no cause to be bummed out by The Living and the Dead, which effortlessly blends whispering-pines Americana, codeine-laced throwback jazz, and—in a new sonic detour—bold shots of cranked-amp roots rock. As on past releases, the songs offer a window into her personal life. Take the bright-eyed pine-tar rambler "Corrido Por Buddy", in which she deals with the trauma of watching an acquaintance slowly kill himself with drugs, going from a "beautiful young man on the streets of Austin" to a "ghost-faced junkie on the streets of New Orleans".

"I don't really have that many tricks up my sleeve in terms of knowing how to deal with stuff when it's really intense and painful," Holland says. "Writing a song about something is the thing that I know how to do. But I'd never written a song about a friend of mine who killed himself. In the end, I never really sort of got the chance to let him know what I thought about him."

What makes The Living and the Dead a personal triumph is that Holland actually believed in herself during the recording of the album, whereas in the past she's doubted her every move. Ismaily deserves no small amount of credit for this, which is ironic, considering he wasn't the singer's first choice. Holland had originally uprooted herself from her long-time base of San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles to work with Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo. When he proved too busy, she headed to New York, mostly because she realized she'd never lived there. After initially enlisting Ward, she hooked up with Ismaily.

"In the past, I don't think that I ever had enough time or money to lay into stuff—it was sort of like going into the studio and pulling off a circus trick," Holland reveals. "With Shahzad, we definitely had more time to play and get the right players and try different things. And I just felt so comfortable working with him. I got to sing in our homes—either his house or my house a lot of times. That's so much easier than the studio, mostly because I'm such a ball of nerves."

Sighing, she adds almost matter-of-factly: "My nervous system is shot."

When asked to elaborate, the singer offers this: "I know why, but it's too personal to talk about."

Blame the demon, then. As everyone dealing with an inner monster that refuses to go away knows, the odds of ever locking that monster up for good are slim to none. Still, The Living and the Dead is enough of an accomplishment that Holland has earned the right to some peace, even if it's only temporary. And if she doesn't find it, she can at least find solace in the fact that she's taken her place among some of the songwriters she's long admired.

"I don't pretend to know how other people are going to take the music," Holland says. "But I have definitely noticed that what I like most about other people's music is emotional nakedness. I love Will Oldham so much because there's no artifice. He's just presenting this occasionally ridiculous version of himself in that he's so bare. Willie Nelson is like that as well, and Daniel Johnston. Those are the kind of writers that I like."

Jolie Holland plays Richard's on Richards on Sunday (October 19).