Escondida

Jolie Holland | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 27, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Anti
• ASIN: B0001L3LHC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,980 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Jolie- The Queen of em All, December 14, 2004

By 

Sara Burlingame "burlingamethomas" (Cheyenne, Wyoming) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Escondida (Audio CD)

I'm not objective- Jolie Holland and her music make me crazy. I don't think of Escondida as a cd that I listen to, I think of it as a place that I go and that I need. I think there are people who get religion and can't get enough of it- they've felt the holy spirit roll down their spine and out their toes and now- nothing else will do. That's how I feel about Jolie. Before her I was a skeptic, but honest to god I've been converted and now I'm a mystic.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Vocalist, April 28, 2004

By 

Aquamenti (Mahtomedi, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Escondida (Audio CD)

There's a reason Tom Waits picked Catalpa, Jolie Holland's first album post-Be Good Tanyas, for the Shortlist Music Prize last year: it's original and beautiful and uncompromising. Escondida is Holland's first studio album. Less rough hewn than her all-demos debut it's just as rooted in her spooky, sultry terrain of old-timey country and Left Bank street jazz, with a little more weight on the latter this time. Her voice, while it can evoke a young Billie Holiday, is all her own and straight from Texas. It slinks, curls and arches like a cat with the run of the place. It's exquisite, like a good jazz trumpeter improvising her way through the woods or around town or up a dirty flight of stairs. (In that sense she's a lot like Billie Holiday). And she's backed up by musicians who know how to dance with her and lyrics that ache and flicker with implications. ("Well, I used to be an angel, now I'm just like everybody else/ Used to be an angel, now I'm just like everybody else/ I left my wings in the gutter/ And my halo is lost . . . dusty on a shelf") Besides playing guitar, ukelele, fiddle, and piano herself, Holland can whistle like a dream. Let's hope this is just the start of a decades-long career. Even if it isn't she's already added to the stock of the world's beautiful sounds with her these two albums. Amen.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique, October 11, 2004

By 

Charles Macnaughton (Meriden, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Escondida (Audio CD)

I'm trying to think of a comparison to other artists that describes Holland's work on this album, because that's how I tend to describe music to other people. In this case, it's very difficult and, invariably, someone will disagree. Maybe it sounds like Patsy Cline doing a Billie Holliday impersonation (or vice-versa) covering a Tom Waits song. Or like Over the Rhine covering Joe Henry songs. Like I said, it ain't easy to describe.

What IS easy, however, is stating that this is a great album. Jolie has a voice that isn't easily captured in the low-bandwidth Amazon samples (it is SO much better!). This is an album full of quirky tunes, even the silliest of which are rendered with an odd kind of beauty.

Like Norah Jones, it's a little bit country and a little bit jazz. Unlike Norah Jones, however, it's also a little bit weird, in the best sense of that word. It's admittedly not the best comparison, but this music doesn't really compare to much that has come before.

Jolie Holland is a great singer. She's a very unique songwriter. This is a great album. Sometimes you just gotta take a chance, and this album is a chance worth taking.