Despite an impressive resume and discography some critics feel Texas-born performer Jolie Holland has failed to find the audience she yielded as a member of the folk outfit The Be Good Tanyas and her early solo career. In a candid Denver Westworld article the singer joked, "I've done a good job ruining my career. One of my biggest mistakes was not having a personal trainer." Holland would later claim her weight, along with a tumultuous end to her connection with a longtime manager, were the reasons she hasn't achieved the success of similar artists Feist and Joanna Newsom.

Whatever.

Holland's progressive takes on traditional forms of music defies genre stereotypes, blending folk, country, rock, jazz and blues elements. Her music is mysterious and fluid, which has garnered high praise from fellow Anti- labelmates Tom Waits and Sage Francis, and a wide range of collaborators including Booker T. Jones, Bad Religion's Greg Graffin, David Gray and Chuck Ragan.

Holland has played to pack houses in Olympia, including the Capitol Theater in 2008.

She's back at the Capitol, tonight, with her band, the Chandeliers and Old Light.

Holland's sense of self-awareness and personally focused humor ties in with her approach to songwriting. Many of her songs cut straight to the core, but the songwriter rarely plays the victim. While Holland certainly sings about doomed lovers, in her cannon she ranks high amid the condemned.  Her touchstones are love and heartache in all of its highs and lows. Her lyrical prowess can cut through an emotion like a red hot knife as in "Tender Mirror" off her 2011 release Pint of Blood: "What I lost in a broken sphere/I'll find in a tender mirror/in the love from the heart." Holland's songs are about feeling. She told The Pitch in 2011, "Music is just a tool of feeling. The music is just some big arrows that point in the direction of the feeling."

Pint of Blood eschews the more traditional and jazz elements of Holland's work, producing a live rock sound reminiscent of Neil Young with some doses of the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones thrown in for good measure.

Jolie Holland & the Chandeliers will be performing songs from Pint of Blood - including "Rex's Blues," a devastating Townes Van Zandt rendition that has seen no shortage of praise for the singer/performer - at the Capitol theater tonight.

Opening the evening's event is the Portland-based group Old Light. The Arena Rock Records act is the perfect opener for Holland and crew. Like Holland, the group has a strong foundation in the roots tradition. At times the band feels very Southern rock, and at other times very Crazy Horse-inspired. While that may sound odd in some respects, for Old Light it comes off effortless and easy.

CAPITOL THEATER, THURSDAY, NOV. 8, 7:30 P.M., $15-$20, 206 E. FIFTH AVE., OLYMPIA, 360.754.6670