Kyp Malone and Jolie Holland: An odd pairing that works

It seemed an odd pairing on paper. With Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone leads the indie-rock band TV on the Radio, favoring dense, genre-blending post-punk. Jolie Holland, on the other hand, anchors her work in old-style blues, early jazz, and rural country. But they found common ground at the North Star Bar on Saturday night. Each loves to bend and slur melodies and vocals; very little is stable in their songs.

Malone is an immensely talented (and immensely bearded) guitarist and vocalist. Accompanied by Grey Gersten on electric guitar and bass and occasionally by Holland on vocals or violin, Malone opened with a 70-minute set of songs that often began as blues-based meditations and then warped in all sorts of directions.

"Give Blood," from his 2009 solo project Rain Machine, started as an aggressive, John Lee Hooker-like stomp with Malone singing in his lower register, then slowed to a shimmering abstraction with falsetto croons, then turned briefly to art-damaged dissonance.

The epic, passionate "Winter Song" slid among radical dichotomies - harsh/pretty, screams/whispers, aggressive/soothing. Malone doesn't care about tension and release; instead, his songs are elastic, ebbing and flowing with unpredictable, fascinating, provocative contours.

Though Holland's songs are slower and steadier, her voice is similarly elastic. No note is steady. Her deep alto slips, elides, wavers, sometimes recalling Lucinda Williams, sometimes Billie Holiday, sometimes Jimmie Rodgers.

Perhaps prompted by sharing the stage with Malone, Holland was more aggressive than her four albums would lead one to expect. Her recordings are eerie; her set, with Gersten and occasionally Malone, was edgy. She previewed a few songs from two albums she has due this year, one of originals, one a collection of songs from the Bucks County-born, Greenwich Village-based folkie Michael Hurley. Her hour-long set included other covers, too: two from fellow warbler Jimmie Dale Gilmore, some old country songs, a bit of Syd Barrett in her own "The Littlest Birds," and, finally, a beautiful duet with Malone on Townes Van Zandt's "Rex's Blues."