Julie Christensen
JULIE CHRISTENSEN/STONE CUPID
Chanteuse Julie Christensen has honed her chameleon craft. In well over a hundred shows she has sung Joan of Arc to Leonard Cohen's flame. She's also sung with Steve Wynn, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Lou Reed and Van Dyke Parks. With Chris D., she headed up the post-punk rock band Divine Horsemen. Others utilizing Julie's kaleidoscope talents have been as far-flung as Iggy Pop, PiL, Robben Ford, and k.d. lang. Her two acclaimed independent Stone Cupid albums are a soulful hybrid of jazz and folk.
Among Christensen’s present musical activities, her connection to Leonard Cohen’s world continues, as a featured member of the Cohen song projects produced by Hal Willner. The tribute’s Sydney Opera House concerts became the core of the acclaimed documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, featuring Christensen and her longtime ally Perla Batalla on the classic Cohen song “Anthem.â€
The Came So Far for Beauty concert series in fact held two performances in Dublin, Ireland in October 2006, and Julie again participated, performing a fiery Joan of Arc with Lou Reed, which was reprised at his show in Santa Barbara in December of that year.
Julie is making a re-entry into her solo career. She's recorded two new albums at once: One is "Something Familiar", a collection of standards, ballads, and blues. The other, produced with members of Santa Barbara's Headless Household, is "Where the Fireworks Are", a rock album of the poetry of emotion and politics stirred up together, out now. Contributors include drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Don Falzone, also part of Came So Far for Beauty, and pianist Karen Hammack, a mainstay of all Julie's music.
on "Where the Fireworks Are"
"From the heart-wrenching title track, which serves up an aching does of harsh reality, to the cascading piano that drives the plaintive “Something Pretty,†Where the Fireworks Are is a collection of songs spanning the emotional spectrum. It provides an evocative musical chariot for Christensen to weave her vocal magic." (Brett Leigh-Dicks) VC REPORTER
on "Something Familiar"
"Julie Christensen is one of the truer singers you’ll ever hear — straight up, no mannerisms, perfect taste...She's got an engraver's way of etching/buffing a lyric. Listen to her takes on “But Beautiful,†“Stolen Moments†and “Blame It on My Youth,†from her piercing new Something Familiar, and recognize how she could sing with both Leonard Cohen and Chris D." (Greg Burk) L.A. WEEKLY
Stone Cupid has its roots in soul, jazz, and folk music, but its wings are in the sky over a blue landscape of the home of the heart.
"Christensen, the stylistically gymnastic songbird calling Ojai home, has a resume that includes work with the post-punk SST band Divine Horseman, two tours and records with Leonard Cohen, and a ne'er released Polygram record produced by Todd Rundgren, for whom she opened up on two recent California tours.
On her first two solo albums, love is driving (1997) and Soul Driver (2001), "Christensen justifies her wandering idiomatic interests-veering from piano-oriented pop of the Carly Simon ilk to L.A. C&W to soul and back--with a lucid artistry and a love of the beautifully-sung note or nicely-sculpted lyric. The title track's horn-fueled feisty R&B/pop energy yields to the emotional, metaphor-fortified sincerity of songs like "Traveling Companion" (in a sinuous 7/8) and "Stone Cupid" (also the name of her label and website). Guests include ambient pedal steel hero Greg (Bill Frisell, Joni Mitchell) Liesz and drummer Jim (Dwight Yoakum) Christie. All in all, a happy, luminous occasion" --Joe Woodard, SB Independent, L.A. Times...
"... from angelic, folky charm to truly badass bluesy wails;
...one of the loveliest voices in contemporary music"
--LA WEEKLY
"Hammack...forms beautiful melodic passages within the tunes' elegant
harmonic structures, thoughtfully adding, as she moves through them, to
the sublime character of each."
--R.A. Roberts on Lonesome Tree