Ollabelle
Ollabelle are a six-person, New York City-based band that celebrates rural American roots music, as well as the joys of group singing. What started as a side project became a bona fide group, named in honor of country singer and songwriter Ola Belle Reed. They mix traditional songs (including "Jesus on the Mainline," "Soul of a Man," and "John the Revelator") with originals, the latter sounding every bit as timeless as the former. Lead singer Amy Helm has had no shortage of exposure to honest music, her father being Levon Helm of theBand. The rest of the band includes singing instrumentalists with varied but nicely overlapping backgrounds. While a number of the songs wrap themselves in spare and acoustic simplicity, they also embrace the more urban bearing of unobtrusively electric blues and funky gospel. Singing over a pulsing rhythm section or an organ-based combo, Helm sounds strikingly (and surprisingly) like Julie Driscoll (later Tippett), who fronted Trinity with Brian Auger in the 1960s. This debut is post-Harry Smith, post-Alan Lomax music at its finest.--David Greenberger