Customer Reviews

Catalpa

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Among the other rewiews I've noticed several comparisons between Jolie Holland's voice and that of Billie Holiday. In a sense, I disagree with such comparisons because Holland sounds as much like Will Oldham's broken larynx or Paul Simon's African inflections as she soes like Holiday. But the comparison is apt because her voice makes you feel the same way as Holiday's did -- like it should be hot outside, but you've got a nice spot in the shade -- like you're reliving a particularly vivid moment from the past.

Catalpa is a collection of stripped-down, low-fi songs that lie firmly in the hard-to-define crossroads of folk, country, blues, and jazz. The songs are as slow and as sweet as molasses. Holland's ballyhooed voice is typically accompanied by acoustic guitar with tickles of banjo, another guitar, drums, and some of the most delicious whistling I've ever heard slipping in occassionally. While the mediocre sound quality gives Catalpa a lovely patina, Amazon's song samples come off a bit tinny. You'll have to give Holland the benefit of the doubt. "Black Hand Blues" shows Holland's more energetic and jazzier side as well as some Holidayesque vocals. "December, 1999" is more demonstrative of the downhome fingerpicking that dominates the album. "Alley Flowers," though one of my least favorie tracks, shows some indie inclinations and helps explain why Holland has opened for bands like Low. Unfortunately, most of the best tracks lay outside of the first five. "The Littlest Birds," (for example) is a wonderfully happy song, reminding me of Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," while "Wandering Angels" straddles musical space between Mazzy Star and Norah Jones.

The only reason I give this album four stars instead of five is that it's a little rough around the edges. I actualy enjoy it more with warts than I would without, but I could picture someone who likes perfect, big-studio production qualities being a little turned off (for example) by the slow, imprecise instrumental build-up leading into "Demon Lover Improv." If you're not scared by the production quality caveat, go out and buy Catalpa -- for all the comparisons I've made it's some of the most delightfully original music I've heard in a long time.

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 tone and sound is exactly as if you had wandered into the musician's garage or backyard and were evesdropping. This is probably the best voyeuristic musical thrill available on CD, reminiscent of spare Blue Note recordings from the Sixties.

So why only four stars? Well, like many freshman efforts, this disc has higher points and lower points, but it's very even in tone, lacking real peaks or valleys. Melodic, but never barn burning (or completely heart-rending). Compared to, say, Bonnie Raitt's 1972 opus "Give It Up" (recorded in a barn), it lacks the real zip that gives you a full-throttle peak. Neither does any particular song break your heart. There is plenty of beautiful, personal music here--even some of the best whistling since Bing Crosby warbled a tune. With some variation and maybe some more humor this would be a truly great find.

My money's on her next album, though, which promises to be shockingly good.

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 favorite lady songwriter/musician.

At that time, her cd was self-released and I purchased it from CD Baby that very night (management contact info. printed right on the disk). Since then, I have listened to Catalpa so many times that I now know every nuance of Jolie's vocal stylings on each song, from trills to whistles to coughs; but each time I play it, I still feel that haunting, tranquil comfort that I felt the first time I heard "All the Morning Birds" over two years ago.

I was lucky to see Jolie perform at NYC's Joe's Pub following the release of Escondida in June 2004. There I met her twin sister, a very lovely woman named Joy, and witnessed a captivating performance by Jolie that I, personally, will never, ever, forget. I sat through the whole performance nearly motionless as I lost myself in her musical ambiance.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch Jolie at this years SXSW music festival due to over-capacity at her venue. Nonetheless, I'm proud that she has acheived that great a response in today's music scene.

What I find to be rare about Jolie is her ability to convey something real, so real that it can't be put into words, through her music. I think that's why people so often describe it as haunting. It haunts you in a way that it touches your soul and tickles your bones, so to speak. And Jolie's soothing voice just creeps into your ears so sweetly. . . .

I've never reviewed a CD before now, but here goes: Catalpa is an honest and raw CD made by a woman that dares to create a new genre of contemporary music by recreating sounds and styles of what has long since passed in american popular culture. Yet her music is not so much a nostalgic recreation of an older sound so much as it is an extension of it's evolution. That's my opinion, anyway.

Jolie, thank you for being who you are. I don't know you personally, but I love you spiritually. Your songs, at times, have been my best friends.

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 a "cabalistic" 12/8 against the guitar and vocal's 4/4, the lyrical fantistical concreteness reminiscent of Syd Barrett or Hank Williams, the fluid soprano that sounds utterly self-taught, and you know it's not an ordinary folk album at all.

This is very, very different music from almost anything you're likely to hear, especially in this day of cheap semi-pro equipment and easy software editing. But it's truly miraculous.

The opening song of Jolie Holland's Catalpa "Alley Flowers" is one of those rare transcendent special musical moments that only seem to be captured when the artist is not really trying to make a record. I'm reminded of Karen Dalton at her best or Skip James singing "Devil Got My Woman". Private and mysterious, yet offhand and appealing in a throw away subconscious way, way back when...

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 once a founding member of the equally eclectic Be Good Tanyas, and carries much of their searching moodiness with her. There's also an art-school diary aspect to this disc, with elusive impenetrable lyrics that are matched by the amorphousness of the music. This album certainly has a unique feel to it... whether she'll be able to sustain the mystique, or sharpen her focus, remains to be seen, but for now Holland has struck a remarkable balance between the pretentious and the sublime... If you're looking for something substantive and off the beaten track, this disc is certainly worth checking out.

That being said, I find all the comparisons to Billie Holiday to be utterly ridiculous and overblown... I mean, get real! Have you folks really ever listened to Billie Holiday?? She was a singer of gigantic stature, a lyrical interpreter sublime beyond compare -- just because Holland croons a little and doesn't sound like Alanis Morrisette or Sheryl Crow, or whoever your modern-day point of reference may be, that doesn't make her "the new Billie Holiday..." Not by a longshot!

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 Night, Cold Was the Ground? That's how people should talk of Alley Flowers. There's nothing else like it. It's a ghostly, shamanic slice of deeply, obviously American music (without being "Americana") that seems to reference nothing. It's not a modern update of anything. It's a gorgeous, heavy song that is just as out of touch with "the times" today as it would have been in 1890 or 1926. You just have to sit down and listen to it in headphones. No review or 20-second mp3 sample is going to transmit what it is this song has to offer.

Overall I'll probably say that Escondida is her best album thus far, but that does a disservice to this essential album. Talk of emotional peaks and valleys is a mistake, I think. What does it mean... an instrumental crescendo? Sudden changes in volume or intensity? Pffffft! You can get big crescendos and melodramatic fluorishes in a million different places. Jolie is beyond that. There are times in Alley Flowers, Black Hand Blues, etc... that can freeze me in my tracks. Alot of times I listen to this album and I can't help but think how I wish Jerry Garcia could have heard her. I think he'd have been tickled to death by the power of this woman. She can take you back in time to an America that's been forgotten and mythologized, but it's all still so modern. Her music is so small and personal that it's also music from an America that exists only in her mind. Jolie is her own truth. This music could not have happened in the 1930s. As much as a superficial listen (and a lack of knowing recorded history) may make someone think she is retro (sorry, I see the "retro music" tag suggestion as I'm writing this), how can she be retro anything when music was never like this before her?

The trumpet-voiced mockingbird from some old dark holler is in full flight for much of this album, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.

ya i dont have the cd i was just listening to it on here. its crazy how similar she sounds the the be good tanyas. strange--even a little freaky. sounds good though : )