CONTINENTAL DRIFTER Jolie Holland covers a massive chunk of America on a new Brooklyn-made album.

Photograph: Scott Irvine

Jolie Holland is sighing, stammering and denying things. She’s not unfriendly or uncooperative; in fact, she’s quite lovely. It’s just that the subject of her image has come up, and she doesn’t know how to talk about it, at least not over the phone from Portland, Oregon, where she is working on recording new music with friends. “I just don’t understand that whole thing,” she says, and changes the subject. Which is interesting, because if she weren’t insisting otherwise, you might think the singer-songwriter had recently engineered a play for indie cachet.

Whether intentional or not, the Texas-born troubadour, whose labelmates on Anti- Records include established outsiders Nick Cave and Tom Waits, has been taking steps that put her a little closer to the middle. Originally a bedroom-tape maker who emerged as a critical success in 2003 with the bent, rootsy album, Catalpa, Holland, 33, has refined her sound steadily over the past five years. On The Living and the Dead, her fourth record, she moves nearer than ever toward straight-ahead folk-rock. She even worked briefly on the album with popular producer and guitarist M. Ward, who recently contributed to successful releases by indie It girls Zooey Deschanel and Jenny Lewis. Like those artists, Holland’s looking more glamorous in her new publicity photos. Finally, and this is the clincher, she moved to Brooklyn.

Except none of this is part of the grand plan it appears to be, she says. The collaboration with Ward was an experiment, the photos show an organic uptick in her spirits, and it’s not like she cares much about the prestige her new home has gained over the past decade. MTV, citing bands like Yeasayer, Grizzly Bear and MGMT, called Brooklyn “one of the most exciting music scenes in the country” earlier this year. But Holland isn’t aware of the epithet, and doesn’t agree anyway. “I think it’s hard to be a musician there,” she says of the borough’s constant hustle. “To the detriment of the music, people just don’t have a whole lot of time.”

On top of the general milieu, there are personal reasons why Holland hasn’t enjoyed living in New York. She went through a divorce during her early days in Park Slope, and, like so many of her artistic neighbors, was subjected to a series of uncomfortable living arrangements thereafter. She shoots down the idea of her move to musician-filled Brooklyn as being a glamorous gambit: “I haven’t been able to give it a chance, because I’ve been sleeping in someone’s living room most of the time I’ve been here.”

A San Franciscan for many years, Holland actually moved to New York to work on The Living and the Dead after Ward abandoned the then-Portland-based project. “He just didn’t think I needed a producer,” she says, “but I didn’t want to work on it myself.” After some initial sessions and discussions, Holland came east to collaborate with Shahzad Ismaily, a lesser-known associate of guitarist Marc Ribot, who also plays on the record. Originally a bass player on the project, Ismaily offered his Bushwick apartment as a place to finish the album, and the two got along famously. There is even audible giggling on the aptly named “Enjoy Yourself,” the result of Ismaily’s studio antics. “He was doing this fucking creepy Lawrence Welk impression, so I just kept on laughing, but in key,” Holland recalls. “It’s easy to get carried away when Jolie plays,” says Ismaily, “because you’re no longer sitting in the chair you’re sitting in. You’re somewhere else.”

Literally speaking, The Living and the Dead has little to do with where it was completed. The opening track, “Mexico City,” based on a dream the musician had about tragic Beat Generation figure Joan Vollmer, takes place in Texas, Manhattan and South of the Border, while the next two tracks wander from Austin to Louisiana. “Corrido por Buddy” is the real-life story of a drug-addicted acquaintance of Holland’s who committed suicide. (“Oh Buddy, I wish I’d been a better friend,” she sings.) And “Palmyra” is a tribute to New Orleans’s Katrina-ravaged Ninth Ward. Holland actually wrote most of the material while she was still living in San Francisco. Though they traverse far-flung locations, the songs on The Living and the Dead are less unwieldy, more focused and probably more likely to be popular than anything Holland’s done before. Of course, if you ask her, that’s not really the point.

Jolie Holland plays Highline Ballroom Nov 11. The Living and the Dead is out Tue 7.

Buy The Living and the Dead now on BN.com