WHAT image comes to mind when you think of a pint of blood?

In the case of American folk, country, rock and jazz singer and songwriter Jolie Holland – who has given her latest album that name – it is a “statement of positivity”.

“My friend Rick Moody (who wrote The Ice Storm) and his girlfriend were over for breakfast and I told them Pint Of Blood was the title and they laughed and said, ‘Don’t hold back! Don’t hold back!’. I think my friends and I have a dark sense of humour,” says Jolie, who will showcase the album at the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, tomorrow night.

“We were around a lot of bad hippies when we were growing up in Austin, Texas, and New Orleans. We weren’t punks, we weren’t hippies, we were kind of art weirdoes and we have an allergy to saying anything straight up, particularly as there were these terrible hippies around us.

“So, Pint Of Blood is supposed to be a statement of positivity. It’s based on a William Burroughs quote, and the title is about a visceral sense of vitality that you get out of a situation or a person.

“All the music performed on this record is motivated by these really great, sensitive musicians I play with, who are all super-sophisticated and virtuosic and are only interested in virtuosity per se and the feelings of the music, which is what Pint Of Blood points to.”

And there was I thinking that a pint of blood was red.

Anyway, no doubt Jolie will explain all tomorrow night when she plays solo, having left her band The Grand Chandeliers at home, travelling light instead, so to speak. “I’m doing this tour alone, which is great as I love playing that way… aside from being lonely,” she says.

The album includes Little Birds, an infectious song that first appeared as Littlest Birds on the debut album by Be Good Tanyas, the band she co-founded but left after 18 months (“a super-brief thing for me”) before recording it.

“I absolutely prefer the version as it is now,” she says. “The other one was great, but I always felt the need to produce that song after the original imprint. Actually, I’ve been trying to do it many times over the past three albums. I’ve tried to cut it but it’s been challenge.”

This time, Jolie and her band of Shazhad Ismaily, Greg Gersten and Marc Ribot hit the song’s sweet spot, and it stands alongside All Those Girls, Remember, Honey Girl and Wreckage as the highlights of an album that evokes memories of past lovers, moonlit fields, tough choices and childhood dreams of summer.

How would Jolie sum up the album? “I don’t know what to say but I had a great time making it and I think all the songs are heavyweights.”

Heavier than a pint of blood, presumably.

• Jolie Holland plays Howard Assembly Room, Grand Theatre, Leeds, tomorrow at 7.45pm on her Pint Of Blood tour, supported by British folk guitarist John Smith. Box office: 0844 848 2706