Catalpa

Amazon.com
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

Product Description
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

Catalpa

Catalpa,Jolie Holland,Anti,Contemporary Singer/Songwriter,Folk-Pop,Lo-Fi,Neo-Traditional Folk,Pop,Rock,Rock/Pop

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Catalpa

Average customer rating: debut shining in the park with a bioluminesence Lovely, to say the least. A different sound, for sure High promise from an unusal record...

Catalpa Jolie Holland Manufacturer: Anti ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music Lo-Fi | Indie & Lo-Fi | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music General | Contemporary Folk | Folk | Styles | Music Singer-Songwriters | Contemporary Folk | Folk | Styles | Music General | Folk | Styles | Music Traditional Folk | Folk | Styles | Music General | Rock | Styles | Music Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music Similar Items: Escondida Springtime Can Kill You Vagabond Lullabies Po' Girl Blue Horse ASIN: B0000DJYMJ Release Date: 2003-11-11

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

Amazon.com

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

Album Description

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

Album Description

Self-produced debut CD from Texas-bred, San Francisco-based singer-songwriter, Jolie Holland. Founding member and songwriter of popular folk outfit, The Be Good Tanyas. 12 tracks. Anti Inc. 2003.

Customer Reviews:

debut.......2007-05-30

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 American 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.

shining in the park with a bioluminesence.......2005-11-24

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.

Lovely, to say the least........2005-08-31

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.

A different sound, for sure.......2004-05-05

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!

High promise from an unusal record..........2004-04-16

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.

Average customer rating:

Catalpa Boys Catalpa Boys Manufacturer: Anyway Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Blues | Styles | Music Traditional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music Old-Time Country | Traditional Country | Country | Styles | Music General | Traditional Country | Country | Styles | Music Traditional Folk | Folk | Styles | Music General | Rock | Styles | Music ASIN: B0001WAGLK Release Date: 2004-05-04

Tracks:

1. Single Seer
2. Grandfather Clock
3. No Word
4. Money in the Bank
5. Stained Glass
6. Cat Autry
7. Squabble
8. Hole in Our Hearts
9. All My Tomorrows
10. Catfish
11. Anchored Airplanes
12. Aching Bones
13. Resurrection

Average customer rating:

Judith Ingolfsson: Debut Recording Manufacturer: Catalpa Classics ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD All Works by J.S. Bach | Bach, Johann Sebastian | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music All Works by Bloch | Bloch, Ernest | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music All Works by Wieniawski | Wieniawski, Henri | ( W ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music General | Baroque (c.1600-1750) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music Violin | Strings | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music General | Classical | Styles | Music General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music ASIN: B00005A00J Release Date: 2000-01-01

Average customer rating:

Georg Philipp Telemann: Quartets and Trios Manufacturer: Catalpa Classics ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | International | Styles | Music General | International | Indie Music | Stores | Music ASIN: B00063S1FM Release Date: 2004-07-01

Tracks:

1. Concerto for flute, violin, viola da gamba & continuo in D major (TWV 43: D1)
2. Concerto for flute, violin, viola da gamba & continuo in G major (TWV 43: G1)
3. Sonata for flute, violin, viola da gamba & continuo in A major (TWV 43: A1)
4. Trio for oboe, violin & continuo in g minor (TWV 42: g5)
5. Quartet for flute, oboe, violin & continuo in G major (TWV 43: G2)

Product Description

Renowned Early Music group, Ensemble Voltaire performs Quartets & Trios by the great Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann.

Average customer rating:

Romantic Treasures for Flute and Piano Manufacturer: Catalpa Classics ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Classical | Styles | Music ASIN: B000CADT56 Release Date: 2002-01-01

Average customer rating: Excellent works! Beautiful

Judith Ingolfsson: Debut Recording Manufacturer: Catalpa Classics ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD All Works by J.S. Bach | Bach, Johann Sebastian | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music All Works by Bloch | Bloch, Ernest | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music All Works by Wieniawski | Wieniawski, Henri | ( W ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music General | Baroque (c.1600-1750) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music Violin | Strings | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music General | Classical | Styles | Music General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music ASIN: B00004ZBFP Release Date: 2000-09-19

Customer Reviews:

Excellent works!.......2004-12-29

This recording shows her passionate and also accurate playing.
Especially, Bach solo sonata reveals her artistic talent with the nice expression of Bach's sprituality.

Beautiful.......2004-05-29

This Icelandic violinist's tone is simply gorgeous and beautiful, just like how she is, inside and out. Her sense of style is moving, and it warms my heart. Kudos to Ms. Judith Ingolfsson and her work! It is just beautiful!

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