JOLIE HOLLAND: Catalpa

Jolie Holland

Catalpa

© 2002 Jolie Holland (045778669127)

CD permanently out of stock. Sorry!

"Walt Whitman's spiritual heir" will sing you a song that will freshen your heart.

tracks

1 Alley Flowers
2 All the Morning Birds
3 Roll my Blues
4 Black Hand Blues
5 December 1999
6 I Wanna Die
7 Demon Lover Improv
8 Catalpa Waltz
9 the Littlest Birds
10 Wandering Angus
11 Periphery Waltz
12 Ghost Waltz

notes

Bio:
Jolie Holland's is a voice that attempts to transcend the new and encompass the old through the medium of American music. Like Ralph Stanley told her, "I don't even know what bluegrass music is--I consider myself a soul singer." So, yes, its the blues, and the tunes our grandparents hummed on unpaved highways, but its the same songs that coaxed tears out of the punk rock boy at the bar. The ladies swayed, the street kids hooted with bright eyes, the hip hop composer unselfconsciously slipped his hand over his heart, and your momma tapped her foot. New time old time: spooky American fairytales.

Tom Waits chooses Catalpa as one of his three favorite Albums of 2003!
http://shortlistofmusic.com
Click on 'Long List of Nominees'
then '2003'
either click on Tom Waits or scroll down to find Catalpa.

Press:

Jolie Holland's Catalpa, although only released in November, it was named on
2003 Top Albums of the Year lists as diverse as:

San Francisco Chronicle, Sonic Magazine (Sweden) and Maxim Magazine

"See What The Critics Are Saying About Jolie Holland"....

Sunday Times (UK)
3 out of 3 stars! Pop album of the week!
...I can't honestly remember how Catalpa beat dozens of other anonymous cd's to the top of the in-tray, but it will emerge as one of the albums of the year....Some songs have been stripped back so far that they no longer have any relationship with American Folk and Blues, instead sounding as if they've wafted in from Mali's Festival in the Desert. Others suggest Billie Holliday grappling with Appalachian mountain music. Strange organic rhythms of indeterminable origin pulse softly, often at odds with the melody. Holland drifts on and off the microphone. There is some whistling. You will be stunned into silence. You will not know why.
(Stewart Lee) Feb '04

MOJO
...it wields an oddly compelling spell
(Colin Irwin) Feb '04

Rolling Stone Germany
4 out of 5 stars!
...the basement tapes of a Texan of whom one will hear a lot of in the future. "Alley Flowers" the first song on this through and through stunning record is a spook: muffled drums and seemingly aimless sounding bells blur the look at a strangely played guitar and the Texan Jolie Holland sings a rapt song. but how!....it's a ghost-ride through what one associates with the origins of American music.....everything can be found in this 5 minute long séance which disappears in fog just like it emerged.
(Jorn Schluter) Feb '04

Tracks magazine
Voluptuous, hypnotic, more than a little distracted - Jolie Holland's voice could be that of the strange cookoo bird in Clarence Ashley's haunted old Appalachian ballad. ...Holland's hornlike, sometimes wordless phrasing is anything but quaint; singing just about everywhere but on the beat, she's obviously listened as closely to Erykah Badu's "Tyrone" as she has to Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." Not just the sum of things you've heard before, these knowing, unvarnished work tapes constitute a sort of transcendental blues, an act of love and theft by a child who's clearly got her own.
(Bill Friskics-Warren) Feb '04


Guardian UK
4 out of 5 stars!
...Holland has crafted a simultaneously fresh, ageless and timeless debut.
(Dave Simpson) Jan '04

Time-Out London
Jolie Holland sings spooky American fairy tails in a strange and beautiful way. At 28, she's about to release one of the most subtly startling debut albums of recent years. Holland's debut album, 'Catalpa' happened almost by accident. Recorded in a variety of front rooms, it was never actually intended for release...it was picked up by Epitaph's ANTI- imprint, home to heroes and fans Tom Waits and Nick Cave as well as Solomon Burke and Merle Haggard. That is some heady roster, but then 'Catalpa' is some remarkable record. On it, Holland's voice quivers and trills and floats like a ghost over bent and broken rhythms of pure and primitive Americana. It's delicate stuff of rural texture with gypsy bell and Indian drum, boho waltz and Cajun shimmy. [Holland] herself plays fiddle, piano and guitar and sings like Appalachian Billie Holiday. (Ross Fortune) Jan '04 Paste The sound conjures up images of dusty Delta roads and cotton fields, Alan Lomax out in front of a tarpaper shack with a field microphone and a primitive tape recorder capturing for posterity the songs of an obscure blues master. Then the voice sings, ³Some people say you got a psychedelic presence/Shinin in the park with a bioluminescense.² Wait a minute. Rewind. What in the world is this? What it is, is Jolie Holland, and the album is Catalpa, a series of homemade demos that mix [many styles]...and a songwriting talent of poetic grace...Holland¹s voice is a remarkably supple instrument; and her phrasing and the way she sidles up to notes is nearly miraculous. You want the slick version of this stuff? Try Bonnie Raitt or Alison Krauss. Catalpa is flawed like a diamond is flawed, and it shines with a one-of-a-kind brilliance.
(Andy Whitman) Feb '04

The Observer (UK)
Meant as a demo album, the dreamy, distant atmosphere of Catalpa has turned the record into an instant cult.....Holland calls her music 'new time, old time, spooky American fairy tales', a fair description of its gothic and pastoral charms...A low-fi, high-intensity tour de force. (Neil Spencer) Feb '04

The Age - Melbourne, Australia
4 out of 4 stars!
... it's almost more like she's singing from beyond the grave - with lines such as "nobody sings like Mary Sue Bell/nobody prays like Willie McTell/nobody walks a mile in my shoes/like I do." Of course, she also rhymes "psychedelic presence" with "bioluminescence," so it's clear Holland is no stick in the mud revivalist; her music is a curious mix of tradition and experimentation. (Anthony Carew) Jan '04

Chicago Sun Times
...revel in the haunting vocals and retro charms of Jolie Holland...Catalpa, which rewards repeat listeners with sweet melodies and a down-home approach that make it seem as if these tapes were unearthed by the Library of Congress in some sort of cultural archeological dig in the Appalachians. It's a work of unsettling beauty that evinces a sense of déjà vu.
(Jeff Wisser) Jan '04

Harp
Some artists gain affection through accessibility; others impress with grand accomplishment. And then there are those like Jolie Holland, who seem to hear things the rest of us can't. [She] wields a voice like something a schizophrenic coalminer's daughter stole from a Sufi mystic's grave...it takes hard listening to find the thread of sense that runs through her crazy-quilted reveries, but once you've grasped hold, you wonder at the mind that put it all together.
(Pamela Murray Winters) Jan '04

The Independent (UK) Saturday Entertainment Guide
4 out of 5 stars!
Texan wanderer Holland releases her debut solo album and is a stark, spooky, gothic gem. Fragilvocals weave over improvised guitar, ukulele and fiddle with a dreaminess that evokes the days of the Carter family and Jimmie Rogers on a barebones production.
(Tim Perry) Jan '04

The Independent (UK) main review
4 out of 5 stars! Album of the week!
Roughly recorded, prizing spontaneity and spirit over technique and clarity - there's even a cough - Catalpa features songs about loneliness and little birds, lost romantic opportunities and ghosts, set to sparse arrangements of guitar, muted banjo, harmonica and percussion, with discreet touches of electric guitar, musical saw or whistling as decoration. Recommended.
(Andy Gill) Jan '04

UNCUT (UK)
...She must have thought [her former band] the Be Good Tanya pared-down acoustics were overblown, for her own debut is like a field recording, full of hiss and crackle as she sings her spooky fairy tales over an acoustic guitatherein, of course, lies its back-porch appeal.
(Nigel Williamson) Jan '04

Times Daily Mirror (UK)
4 out of 5 stars!
Jolie's collection of home recordings was originally intended solely for distribution at her shows. But celebrity fan campaigned for an official release. Not hard to hear why the mix of old timey tunes, wounded delta blues and Cajun waltzes suggest Jolie has a direct line to a dark, secret American past. A fascinating debut album.
(Gavin Martin) Jan '04

Esquire
Holland's debut, Catalpa, finds her wrapping Billie Holiday's phrasing around narratives spookier than a Tobe Hooper production. And while there are undercurrents of traditional folk, gospel, and blues, there are also the inimitable hallmarks of classic country - the warmth of a smoky gin joint and the warble of a gravel road. The bare-bones arrangements of tunes like "All The Morning Bird" and "I Wanna Die" reveal a vulnerability as chilling as anything in Johnny Cash's American Recordings series.
(Andy Langer) Jan '04


CMJ New Music Monthly
With her haunting ruminations on early 20th Century American folk music, Jolie Holland almost makes Gillian Welch sound slick and moder.At no time, however, does Catalpa sound like a sober PBS documentary slowly panning over sepia-toned photographs as banjos plink in the backgrounTom Waits (who picked Catalpa for his short-list) was no doubt moved by Holland's ability to deliver both pastoral beauty and apocalyptic terror in tracks like "I Wanna Die," an ironic singalong slice of Appalachia. Bliss and tragedy join hands again for "All The Morning Birds," which ponders loved ones who have passed. "I'm telling you now/ You are the stars that I'll follow endlessly," she sings. Songs like these are neither old nor new: They are timeless.
(Steve Ciabattoni) Dec '03


Amazon.com
Among the most stunning debuts of 2003by this strikingly talented singer who sounds like Billie Holiday covering Cat Power versions of Appalachian folk songs. 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) Dec '03


Maxim Magazine
Like some dusty relic exhumed from another era, Catalpa weaves disparate strands of music history into an alluring, exotic future.
(David Peisner) Dec '03


One Way Magazine Cover Story
Sounding at times like an aged blues singer on a scratchy 78..This modern young woman from Texas has channeled the soul of the blues and parlayed a collection of basement-style tapes into one of the most unique recording debuts in recent memory..And if the simple yet spicy tunes offered as appetizers by Catalpa are any indication, Jolie Holland is cooking up one hell of a main course, with many meals to come.
(Lynne Bronstein) Dec '03


San Francisco Chronicle
...throughout this remarkable debut, there is also an eerie, haunting feel, sounds from other times and places unified by Holland's ageless voice. She sounds like a little girl and then like an old woman, sometimes both at once. Holland's new label mate Tom Waits picked "Catalpa" for the short-list (www.shortlistofmusic.com), writing, "Her music is like creek-dipping at Birdland."
(Joel Selvin) Nov03


Rolling Stone.com
Thanks to an underground buzz, her crafty basement tape recording is one happy accident of refreshingly underproduced, heady Americana that was never intended to reach an audience wider than the back porch. Taking cues from vocal jazz, backwoods blues and moaning Appalachia, Holland, a co-founder of the equally impressive Be Good Tanyas, has created an unconventional collection of compelling arrangements. Her log-cabin vocals are rife with graceful trills and float ghostlike through crooked melodie.
(Robin Aigner) Nov '03


All Music Guide
4 out of 5 stars!
...[Holland's] images are rich, though stark and Gothic; they sound transposed. While her worldview is mostly modern, its articulation is rooted in a mythical, metonymic America that ceased to exist long before a Greil Marcus ever thought about writing Invisible Republi[In Hollans songs] the present and the past intermingle, where street corners and figures like Jesus and Zora Neale Hurston are evoked as relational archetypes, effortlessl.in the grain of her voice one can hear Holland as every tired, homeless woman who has ever wondered how she slid so far into despai..leaving its ghost traces in the heart and mind of the listener.
(Thom Jurek) Nov '03


Salon.com
Catalpa, San Francisco singer-songwriter phenomenon Jolie Holland's first solo CD. She does for folk, fiddle and country what Billie Holliday did for the blues, wrapping her unforgettable voice around each note and taking it somewhere you wouldn't have ever thought of; though the minute you hear her, you realize it was the only right place the note could go.
(Sheerly Avni) Jul '03


Punk Planet
With her flute-like, fluttering, multi-octave, voice, Jolie Holland sings spooky lullabies that hush and charShe plays anything stringed, (piano, fiddle, guitar, banjo, ukulele), and whistles in perfect pitch...she's the real McCoy
(Jillian Steinberger) Jul '03


West Coast Performer
Holland's voice bears the weight of a thousand stories. Is heartbreaking yet soothing, unusual yet familiar. Her songs hum with freshness yet evoke something sacred from decades past, when musicians lived by cultivating their craft and their craft compelled them to live. She whistles with the perfect trill of a whippoorwill and can play the strings of her little red ukulele just as soon as she can create a masterpiece on a pawnshop fiddle or a haunting melody on her toy accordion.
(Lisa Butterworth) Jun '03


SF Bay Guardian
...Holland manages to make the music fresh as well as keep it reaHolland's songs strike a sustained chord of wanderlust and longing. "Catalpa Waltz" and "All the Morning Birds" echo the raw recordings of troubadours such as Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTelThe opener "Alley Flowers" includes a slave-chant rhythm and a rattling chains accompaniment that oozes like a primordial stew. Catalpa has its sunnier and more psychedelic moments, culled from such disparate sources as Syd Barrett, Zora Neale Hurston, and W.B. Yeats in the evergreen folk-blues tradition of recycling. All of the songs are highlighted by Holland's plaintive voice, which brings to mind a Southern-fried Billie Holiday.
(James Yamasaki) May '03


"An amazing San Francisco-based artist releases what could be the album of the year.....She sings like a young old-time mountain woman with one foot in the past, one foot in the now. Her voice is comfortable, recognizable, yet different. It's a voice that's sweet and fragile, a voice that understands both hard times and love. When you listen to Holland, you hear a real person singing. At times she just seems to be conveying the story, in the most matter-of-fact manner. For some of Catalpa it's as if a tape recorder had been set up in a room of a San Francisco apartment and Holland simply played her favorite songs, which just might be how some of this wonderful album was made."
Michael Goldberg (founder of neumu.net, Sonicnet and 10 yrs editor/writer at Rolling Stone Magazine) Feb '03

reviews

Please log in to review this album.

  • Very Raw and Piercing
    author: Alyse Black

    I absolutely adore the straight-to-the-gut effect of these songs. You can't help move along to the music - both physically and emotionally - almost spiritually.

  • A Masterpiece
    author: pino italy

    Listening to this CD we imagine of being in the atelier of painter(the place where be recordes this CD),to the presence of the painter(Jolie Holland),that it uses the colours(the songs).The painter begins to paint and we listen the CD.In the end the painted picture is one nude,beatiful,and we are listened to a music nude,simple,moving,extraordinary.Not there comments to make this CD,is a masterpiece,and Jolie Holland is very artist who not describe itself any to catalogue.It most alone listening.BRAVISSIMA.

  • A tangible and honest homespun exposition.
    author: Joshua Brown

    A tangible and honest homespun exposition feeling not unlike entering the home of a friend, for years unseen, to partake of warm memories' recollection, wisdom's counsel, and hearty fare of the time-tested variety; Catalpa is beautifully raw and speaks from the heart to the heart.

  • spleen and inspiration
    author: sara

    she's one of the most inspired artist i've heard, she's one of a kind, she's timeless she's sad she's deep she's full of hope she's lovely she is AMAZING!!!!

  • one of a kind
    author: Emily

    This is great, I've been listening to her second album, Escondida,for months now and finally decided to to order her first one. Catalpa is great because it is more country and less polished. With a voice like that you don't need to be polished;-)

  • Her voice combines elements of Libba Cotten, Billie Holiday and Lucinda Williams
    author: Tom Herriman, Seattle

    Jolie Holland's voice is a mixture of Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Cotten and Lucinda Williams. Her lyrics are strikingly original and adhesive...they stay in your head. Phrases and melodies keep coming back, recirculating in your mind. Her version of the Yeats poem "Song of the Wandering Aengus" is the best I've ever heard. Most folk songs based on that poem are sentimental slop. But her version seems like she collaborated with Yeats on it. Jolie Holland is a great singer and songwriter. This is a great CD

  • Comparisons with Gillian Welch inevitable
    author: Carole, Melbourne Australia

    I ordered this CD on word of mouth without ever having heard Jolie sing a note. Sometimes it pays to take a chance, eh? The comparisons with Gillian Welch are inevitable. Looking forward to hearing "Escondida", hoping for a well-produced ensemble of skilled musicians to better support Jolie's beautiful ethereal voice

  • Beautiful Record!
    author: Angelina

    I just can't stop listening to this. The day I received Catalpa I must have listened to it at least 5 times in a row. It's so beatiful!

  • author: dan dougherty

    jolie holland is as good of a singer-songwriter as you're likely to get. she's a vintage voice with a modern heart.

  • author: Tim Keefe, DJ at KCSS 91.9 Turlock, CA

    Great piece of work by a wonderful new performer. The atmospheric low-tech effect that this CD creates as you listen to it (again and again) just builds from beginning to end. Much applause for the song "Little Birds", a highlight that will garner much airplay on my radio show.

  • Best female Voice and performance I have heard since hearing Gillian Welch
    author: Steve

    Best female Voice and performance I have heard since hearing Gillian Welch

  • author: carolyn

    when a voice as magical and a sound as captivating as jolie's are playing in your ear, anything could happen. her music conjours up feelings and visions from the past, from another world,a little dreamy, a little mournful, a liitle erie,a little haunted and so very REAL. always delightful and evocatively beautiful. these songs are real treasures to find, the "littlest birds" is a pure and soulful song, and Wanderin Angus is magical, the singing, the guitar, that is my all time favorite!

  • author: ben

    Great cd. Jolie Holland transcends any particular genre of music to get to the roots of American music. Her voice accompanied by the acoustic guitar lend a feeling of another era to the music.

  • tremondous... a record to live by
    author: joel

    catalpa carried me to a place in my heart i didn't know existed. it's the kind of music that gets in through the skin, not the ears. it surrounds and drowns you... her voice rings with power and vulnerability... tremendous

  • Beautiful voice, memories of old, rootsy, down to earth...loved it!
    author: Old Thyme

    Love this CD. Memories of old, and beautiful voice that seems timeless. The rawness of the sound in the recording made it more appealing to me. Highly recommended!

  • Heals your wounds
    author: Ewen

    This cd is like having an Elastoplast put over a cut. It helps heal you after a stressful day at work. Just turn off the light put it on your cd player and let it work it's simplistic charm. It's sounds as if we are all down on the beach round a campfire listening to one woman and her guitar. The only thing that's missing is the crackling of the fire. Yes that raw. They sure don't make them like this anymore.

  • Speechless
    author: Michael Hoenig

    There are not enough words in this or any other language to describe how completely wonderfull this album is. I am physically incapable of taking it out of my cd player.

  • Your ear will wish it had teeth that it might eat up this voice.
    author: Gabriel L. Nathan

    With "Catalpa" Jolie Holland humbly reveals herself to be an enchanting songstress, weaving together eloquence in lyrics with simplicity of melody to produce memorable songs and genuine art. It is apparent to me that Ms Holland's mind and her heart are intact and work together seamlessly on this CD. You will be proud to own a copy, I promise.

  • Do try this at home.
    author: Jenn

    What a great album! It's like floating down a creek on a summer day, soothing and a little exciting. I've enjoyed Holland's voice since I first heard The Be Good Tanyas' Blue Horse. What I appreciate particular to this CD is the easy, toe-tapping feeling as well as it's overall simplicity. I only wish I knew how to pronounce "Catalpa".

  • morphine and whiskey cocktail for late night watching vegas burn
    author: conor

    not sure if i wanna laugh or cry. got me floating all right. mighty high too. sitting shot gun to god watching out for fawns in the wieght of cat gut lullabies. yes this is and will be undeniable.

  • so totally beautiful
    author: slade baird

    The album is even better than I had hoped it would be (based on the songs on the website)...this is going to remain in my cd player for many moons...gorgeous voice, original songwriting, the music is raw, haunting, beautiful. I am a big fan!

  • Can't stop listening to this record!
    author: Kelly Stewart

    I wouldn't categorize Catalpa as country, bluegrass, blues, or roots, but Jolie Holland borrows from all of these genres to make this record. Or then again, it sounds as if she hasn't listened to *any* modern recordings as influences. That's the dichotomy to this record: you want to classify it but you lose the struggle in the end and have to simply let it wash over you. A brilliant record that seems to have made itself...from the collective conscious of those seeking meaning and truth in the world. Or then again, maybe it's just one solitary voice in an apartment with a microphone. Philosophy aside, I say buy this darn record!

  • Pristine and personal!!!!
    author: Dani

    This Cd is just what the Dr. ordered. If you like music that is personal, so personal it sounds like the musician is right there in the room with you, crooning and singing right to you, than this is the Cd for you. I love this Cd. Right down to the little cough that made it in there. I can't get enough of it. Thanks Jolie!!!!

  • Soulful, reminisent and intimate
    author: Pilar Gizzi

    This CD encorporates so beautifuly the sound of early blues and blue grass music while being powerfully original at the same time. Her voice is honest and strong and still maintains a lovely vulnerability that allows the listener to enjoy the intimacy of her music.

  • Superb CD, unusual and beautiful.
    author: Rebecca

    I bought this CD after hearing Jolie sing/play on "Blue Horse" by the Be Good Tanyas, and her solo album definitely doesn't disappoint. The sound is quite lo-fi, but not overly so, and her voice is wonderful throughout. Overall, a rare and beautiful recording.

  • Sweet & Mellow music to my ears...
    author: Popeye

    A quality raw recording. It sounds like her and the rest of the musicians are sitting in the car with me. The songs are stripped down and simple, which is good,

  • Sweet & Mellow music to my ears...
    author: Popeye

    A quality raw recording. It sounds like her and the rest of the musicians are sitting in the car with me. The songs are stripped down and simple, which is good,

  • felt like my own private bedroom show
    author: Indi in Seattle

    at first i wasn't sure if i liked the muffled sound, the random background noise, the lack-si-dasi-callness of the whole afair. but i like how intimate it makes the whole album sound. like i was listening to her play while hiding in the closet-and the cough on "all the morning birds" is when she catches me. if only there were more whistling.

  • Beautiful.
    author: Goldaline

    This CD is amazing. I don't particularly like country music, and yet Jolie Holland is quickly becoming one of my favorite musical artists. I highly recommend Catalpa to music lovers of any kind.

  • Can't take it out of the car CD player
    author: Steven Shand

    This is everything I expected and more, if you love The Be Good Tanyas then this is natural choice for you. I can't bear to take it out of the car CD player, despite going to see Bonnie Raitt tonight, I know that when I leave the gig it'll be Catalpa taking me home.

email

Please log in to email this artist.