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JENNY ON HOLIDAY
Quicksand Heart(Transgressive Records)
Add date: 1.13.2026
Release date: 1.9.2026
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Instagram
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
Transgressive
YouTube
A “quicksand heart” is a striking image: a whorling vortex of feeling, a pulsating pit of emotion. It’s how Jenny Hollingworth came to describe how she gives and receives love. The Norwich musician, one half of the synthy-bizarro pop band Let’s Eat Grandma since the age of 13, now 26, makes this the moniker of her debut solo album. “I’ve got a heart made of quicksand, I’ve got bones made of fucked up stories, came straight from the dustpan,” she sings on the title track, “can you sweep me up into your arms now, and make me feel?” With this too, a new name for herself: Jenny On Holiday.
Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton signed to Transgressive Records at age 16 and released their juggernaut debut I, Gemini in 2016, a strange strain of melodic electronic, freaky folk pop. 2018’s critically acclaimed I’m All Ears expanded into fantastical new sonic territories, anchored by sweet yet acerbic vocals, uncanny lyrics, and the late SOPHIE’s mutant productions: “Hot Pink” was its anthem, sweeping through AOTY lists. 2022 brought them back to band mode with the powerful Two Ribbons—it starkly captured personal experience of grief and the changing shape of their friendship, as they grew into womanhood. The image no longer of twins, but of two unfurling fabrics, was pertinent.
“Two Ribbons was emotionally intense,” says Hollingworth. It offered catharsis, and with that, a shared want to explore themselves as solo artists. “We wanted to try something new, but we’ve also been able to focus more on being friends,” she says. “We’ve done three albums as L.E.G. This is a way that keeps us out of a creative rut, exploring, and ultimately, coming back to the band.” Still, we’re not…L.E.G-less here. Hollingworth and Walton are swapping demos and track-by-tracks, sleeping over and jamming. Walton appears on several songs (“Dolphins”, “Good Intentions”, “Appetite”) as backing vocals. “Rosa is A&Ring this record,” Hollingworth jokes.
It’s on this sublime 10-track record that Hollingworth brings her own threads together, as a storyful lyricist and commanding, crystalline vocal; Jenny on Holiday unspools into a pristine pop tapestry. Quicksand Heart’s organ analogy palpitates across the record. “I used to get this feeling that everyone had hearts made of different materials—and I felt like mine was a bit defective,” she reflects. “I feel like my heart and my head are all made from the wrong things. That image is about wanting to be loved, and to love and live as a human does, despite the fact you’re maybe like the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz.”
Hollingworth started writing the record across a slow summer in 2023—she gleaned two songs from those hot months in her Norwich bedroom. The neon synthy, hymn-like “These Streets I Know” came first. The majority of the tracks were written last year, and she got into the London studio for early spring. “I took my time to figure out what kind of a record it was,” Hollingworth says. “It revealed itself slowly: it’s about finding joy in wanting to live.”
Following a period of depression, it was this gentle arc to an album that propelled a new sense of clarity. “There were darker experiences I had gone into with the last record, so deeply, and here was an opportunity to make something that reclaimed a kind of living I feared I wouldn’t get again,” Hollingworth says.
She and producer Steph Marziano came up with ‘Jenny on Holiday’—a playful name in keeping with the lexicon of L.E.G. “I am basically on holiday from the band,” Hollingworth says wickedly. This is a record of joy, power, and abundance, fizzing with energy that sweeps up raw and punky basslines a la The Replacements, twinkling synths, and otherworldly, expressive vocal shades that recall Elizabeth Fraser and Paul Westerberg with equal fervor. “My voice is the instrument I enjoy expressing myself most on,” she says. In the production process, she focused time doing vocals and keys.
Hollingworth has found confidence in her lyricism too—The Streets straight-talking narrative style have been an influence. “Pacemaker” is about the fear of not keeping up with the intensity your heart demands, uplifted by Hollingworth’s intricate vocal swoops and melodies. “You’re taking every ounce of me” is a refrain that soars above a piercing electric guitar, over crowds and to the back bars on “Every Ounce of Me”. “Is it so wrong to want? Is it so bad to take what’s yours?” she demands in climbing crescendos on “Appetite”, driven by optimistic, jangling guitars. It’s storytelling that’s cinematic and dramatic. Hollingworth says she’d often write songs to films and videos, like the Nana anime. “Good Intentions” was written to scenes from Singin’ in the Rain, and “Pacemaker” to heart palpitating clips of ’90s Tour de France cyclists.
Hollingworth’s fearlessness extends to the record’s most straight-up, heartful pop songs. “I’m not really concerned with trying to do stuff that’s interesting for the sake of it,” she says, looking from Prefab Sprout to The Beach Boys, Kate Bush, Teenage Fanclub, Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner on an expansive pop palette. It makes for a record that’s driving and immediate, to be sung to friends in the festival pit or hummed alone on the night bus. “I’m so excited by the pop format—to be able to put something emotionally complex into this simple, accessible form.”
Hollingworth admits her Logic-made demos were “an absolute state”, which Marziano—who has worked with Hayley Williams and Nell Mescal—helped distill. Studio time was often with Marziano, Guitarist Jacob Berry, and Walton in Northeast London. “I need that sense of continuity and intimacy with the record.” Production is upfront and bold, and even its most melancholic rhythms, blushes with pop sensibilities. “I wanted to let go of any mad song structures and ideas that weren’t succinct,” explains Hollingworth. “I wanted to push at the edge of the universe of pop and make these big, bold songs about my fear of dying and things going wrong in my life and finding my feet again on the ground. That’s my pop.”
The record came with its challenges, some lyrics finished in London chain hotels before studio sessions: “I kept getting worried that ideas were too simple, but I found that as a songwriter, those small, straightforward stories can be articulated into something so emotionally profound and complex.” The lyrics to “Dolphins”—which first felt like those “written by a little kid—are what she’s most proud of. Quicksand Heart has been a necessary, liberating creative challenge. “A lot of my time has been spent singing and writing songs on a laptop in my childhood bedroom,” Hollingworth says. “I have learned it takes time, to trust my instinct, and know weathering the mental breakdowns is worth it.”
Quicksand Heart’s artwork is shot by Steve Gullick—a legendary photographer who has lensed everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey—and casts Hollingworth as a hyper-saturated, sensual, hypnotic protagonist, wearing her mother’s wedding dress. “It’s not to reflect typical kinds of romances, but a love of life,” she says of the visual and aural imagery. It’s this energy, too, that she’s excited to bring to the stage and live shows again. “So I’m here living in a way that’s a complete expression of self,” Hollingworth says simply. “Hiding nothing, never muting any feelings.” The quicksand heart cannot be quelled. It is a celebration of life.
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
Transgressive
YouTube
A “quicksand heart” is a striking image: a whorling vortex of feeling, a pulsating pit of emotion. It’s how Jenny Hollingworth came to describe how she gives and receives love. The Norwich musician, one half of the synthy-bizarro pop band Let’s Eat Grandma since the age of 13, now 26, makes this the moniker of her debut solo album. “I’ve got a heart made of quicksand, I’ve got bones made of fucked up stories, came straight from the dustpan,” she sings on the title track, “can you sweep me up into your arms now, and make me feel?” With this too, a new name for herself: Jenny On Holiday.
Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton signed to Transgressive Records at age 16 and released their juggernaut debut I, Gemini in 2016, a strange strain of melodic electronic, freaky folk pop. 2018’s critically acclaimed I’m All Ears expanded into fantastical new sonic territories, anchored by sweet yet acerbic vocals, uncanny lyrics, and the late SOPHIE’s mutant productions: “Hot Pink” was its anthem, sweeping through AOTY lists. 2022 brought them back to band mode with the powerful Two Ribbons—it starkly captured personal experience of grief and the changing shape of their friendship, as they grew into womanhood. The image no longer of twins, but of two unfurling fabrics, was pertinent.
“Two Ribbons was emotionally intense,” says Hollingworth. It offered catharsis, and with that, a shared want to explore themselves as solo artists. “We wanted to try something new, but we’ve also been able to focus more on being friends,” she says. “We’ve done three albums as L.E.G. This is a way that keeps us out of a creative rut, exploring, and ultimately, coming back to the band.” Still, we’re not…L.E.G-less here. Hollingworth and Walton are swapping demos and track-by-tracks, sleeping over and jamming. Walton appears on several songs (“Dolphins”, “Good Intentions”, “Appetite”) as backing vocals. “Rosa is A&Ring this record,” Hollingworth jokes.
It’s on this sublime 10-track record that Hollingworth brings her own threads together, as a storyful lyricist and commanding, crystalline vocal; Jenny on Holiday unspools into a pristine pop tapestry. Quicksand Heart’s organ analogy palpitates across the record. “I used to get this feeling that everyone had hearts made of different materials—and I felt like mine was a bit defective,” she reflects. “I feel like my heart and my head are all made from the wrong things. That image is about wanting to be loved, and to love and live as a human does, despite the fact you’re maybe like the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz.”
Hollingworth started writing the record across a slow summer in 2023—she gleaned two songs from those hot months in her Norwich bedroom. The neon synthy, hymn-like “These Streets I Know” came first. The majority of the tracks were written last year, and she got into the London studio for early spring. “I took my time to figure out what kind of a record it was,” Hollingworth says. “It revealed itself slowly: it’s about finding joy in wanting to live.”
Following a period of depression, it was this gentle arc to an album that propelled a new sense of clarity. “There were darker experiences I had gone into with the last record, so deeply, and here was an opportunity to make something that reclaimed a kind of living I feared I wouldn’t get again,” Hollingworth says.
She and producer Steph Marziano came up with ‘Jenny on Holiday’—a playful name in keeping with the lexicon of L.E.G. “I am basically on holiday from the band,” Hollingworth says wickedly. This is a record of joy, power, and abundance, fizzing with energy that sweeps up raw and punky basslines a la The Replacements, twinkling synths, and otherworldly, expressive vocal shades that recall Elizabeth Fraser and Paul Westerberg with equal fervor. “My voice is the instrument I enjoy expressing myself most on,” she says. In the production process, she focused time doing vocals and keys.
Hollingworth has found confidence in her lyricism too—The Streets straight-talking narrative style have been an influence. “Pacemaker” is about the fear of not keeping up with the intensity your heart demands, uplifted by Hollingworth’s intricate vocal swoops and melodies. “You’re taking every ounce of me” is a refrain that soars above a piercing electric guitar, over crowds and to the back bars on “Every Ounce of Me”. “Is it so wrong to want? Is it so bad to take what’s yours?” she demands in climbing crescendos on “Appetite”, driven by optimistic, jangling guitars. It’s storytelling that’s cinematic and dramatic. Hollingworth says she’d often write songs to films and videos, like the Nana anime. “Good Intentions” was written to scenes from Singin’ in the Rain, and “Pacemaker” to heart palpitating clips of ’90s Tour de France cyclists.
Hollingworth’s fearlessness extends to the record’s most straight-up, heartful pop songs. “I’m not really concerned with trying to do stuff that’s interesting for the sake of it,” she says, looking from Prefab Sprout to The Beach Boys, Kate Bush, Teenage Fanclub, Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner on an expansive pop palette. It makes for a record that’s driving and immediate, to be sung to friends in the festival pit or hummed alone on the night bus. “I’m so excited by the pop format—to be able to put something emotionally complex into this simple, accessible form.”
Hollingworth admits her Logic-made demos were “an absolute state”, which Marziano—who has worked with Hayley Williams and Nell Mescal—helped distill. Studio time was often with Marziano, Guitarist Jacob Berry, and Walton in Northeast London. “I need that sense of continuity and intimacy with the record.” Production is upfront and bold, and even its most melancholic rhythms, blushes with pop sensibilities. “I wanted to let go of any mad song structures and ideas that weren’t succinct,” explains Hollingworth. “I wanted to push at the edge of the universe of pop and make these big, bold songs about my fear of dying and things going wrong in my life and finding my feet again on the ground. That’s my pop.”
The record came with its challenges, some lyrics finished in London chain hotels before studio sessions: “I kept getting worried that ideas were too simple, but I found that as a songwriter, those small, straightforward stories can be articulated into something so emotionally profound and complex.” The lyrics to “Dolphins”—which first felt like those “written by a little kid—are what she’s most proud of. Quicksand Heart has been a necessary, liberating creative challenge. “A lot of my time has been spent singing and writing songs on a laptop in my childhood bedroom,” Hollingworth says. “I have learned it takes time, to trust my instinct, and know weathering the mental breakdowns is worth it.”
Quicksand Heart’s artwork is shot by Steve Gullick—a legendary photographer who has lensed everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey—and casts Hollingworth as a hyper-saturated, sensual, hypnotic protagonist, wearing her mother’s wedding dress. “It’s not to reflect typical kinds of romances, but a love of life,” she says of the visual and aural imagery. It’s this energy, too, that she’s excited to bring to the stage and live shows again. “So I’m here living in a way that’s a complete expression of self,” Hollingworth says simply. “Hiding nothing, never muting any feelings.” The quicksand heart cannot be quelled. It is a celebration of life.