Four years later Hollick is sitting cross-legged high in the clouds holding crystal balls and wearing a sacred heart on the cover of her third album, The Real World. The religious connotations in the image aren't frivolous.

The Real World, is indeed, the most spiritual album Hollick has produced, but not in the Christian sense.

Hollick's deep spiritual connection with the planet is at the core of the album. On the heart-breaking title track, which begins with an ominous swell of synths and violin, before Hollick sings, "Have you heard the real world's dying?/ Have you seen her burning sands?/ Have you heard the real world's dying by our hand?"

The nostalgic and sweet country twang of Hollick's voice only makes the words all the more prophetic.

Wilderness Tune, inspired by bushland near Hollick's Ballarat home, is another spiritual tune filled with pain and longing.

Hollick recorded the album in 2019 in the Rancho del la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California using members of Lucinda Williams' band Buick 6. It's resulted in much of the country-folk styling of Hollick's previous work to be beefed up with thrashings of guitar.

The famed Americana band's guttural grunt is all over Hollick's opening track, the desert rock-flavoured Nobody's No Better Than No One and transforms Vivienne, June, Dolly & Jolene from a slow waltz into rollicking slab of heartland rock.

Hollick's Dolly Parton-esque honky tonk humour remains on Impossible To Love where she sings, "I'm impossible to love/ I really don't know why you bother?/ Been with younger guys/ But they ain't much between the covers."

The album closer What a Tender Thing is inspired by Willie Nelson's Stardust and showcases that under her show business bravado there lies a sweetheart.

The Real World is Hollick's songwriting at it's most real and poignant. It's rooted in '70s cosmic country, but looking to the future.

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