Catalpa
 | Anti, 2003, Audio CD |
|---|
Catalpa is the self-produced debut CD from Texas-bred, San Francisco-based singer-songwriter, Jolie Holland. Catalpa will appeal to fans of Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch, Cat Power, Will Oldham, Woody Guthrie and Rickie Lee Jones
Among the most stunning debuts of 2003, Catalpa was initially self-released by Ms. Holland in January, but word quickly spread beyond her San Francisco home of this strikingly talented singer who sounds like Billie Holiday covering Cat Power versions of Appalachian folk songs. After a bidding war, the album was re-released on Anti — worth noting because it makes her the first up-and-comer to sign with the same label as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Solomon Burke. When Holland made these recordings, she hadn't set out to make an album at all; some tunes were demos and others were simply recordings made to teach her songs to potential accompanists. Holland helped found Canadian alt-folk act the Be Good Tanyas, and, although she left them due to creative differences, her music is similar to that of the Tanyas — just stranger, sparser, and more haunting. The most apt reference point might be the '60s folk singer Karen Dalton, but Holland's voice is so strong and sweet the nearest analog might actually be Van Morrison circa 1968. Her voice floats about like the loveliest bumblebee in flight on "All the Morning Birds," while the ghosts of Bessie Smith and Geechie Wiley are channeled on the acoustic blues stomp "Black Hand Blues." — Mike McGonigal
- Alley Flowers
- All the Morning Birds
- Roll my Blues
- Black Hand Blues
- December, 1999
- I Wanna Die
- Demon Lover Improv
- Catalpa Waltz
- The Littlest Birds
- Wandering Angus
- Periphery Waltz
- Ghost Waltz
Title: Catalpa
Sales Rank: 61996 in Music
Artist: Jolie Holland
Label: Anti, 2003-11-11, Audio CD, 1 Disc
Item Dimensions: 0.2 pounds
Package Dimensions: 5.55 x 4.97 x 0.54 inches, 0.18 pounds
- debut
- Jolie is from another era. I continue to think that had her music been found on a crackly old Paramount side in someone's attic in the 1960s she'd be viewed in the same sort of light that shines on Skip James or Washington Phillips. Still, such comparisons fall short. You know the way people talk about Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was the… More reviews
- shining in the park with a bioluminesence
- If you didn't know what it was, you'd swear it was recorded in the field 70 years ago. The outright primitive audio quality, acoustic instruments, the little mistakes and coughs left in... it's a diamond in the rough, left uncut because there's so much beauty in the imperfections.
Then you notice the opening track's muffled frame-drum percussion is playing… More reviews
- Lovely, to say the least.
- I heard "All The Morning Birds" one lonely evening in June 2003 on listener supported/free form radio WFMU and immediately felt an overwhelming surge of comfort flow from mind to body. As I recall, I was actually stunned while listening to this most hauntingly beautiful, raw song. Immediately, as the song ended, I called the DJ and discovered that Jolie Holland was my new… More reviews
- A different sound, for sure
- This is one of the most distinctive, defiantly genre-bending albums to come down the pike in quite some time... Generally speaking, it's in the "Americana" realm, but with odd, insistent jags of torchy jazz, blues and indefinable world music influences. It's not surprising since Holland, who has become a fixture on the Northern California/SF Bay Area scene, was… More reviews
- High promise from an unusal record...
- Catalpa is an aberation in an age of slickly produced and packaged material: a murky, dim, low fidelity, home made confection, complete with the occasional cough from the musicians, off-harmonies, and tuning up jams. Out of this sere, almost inaudible background comes Holland's bright, lilting soprano and, well... that's quite some pretty Southern inflected skylark in there. The whole… More reviews
