Carla Bozulich- Boy (2014)

Carla Bozulich- Boy (2014)

Although Carla Bozulich doesn’t play with industrial acts like Ethyl Metplow anymore, the music she makes this days seem to evocate that music`s violent push into submission of the listener, Bozulich is a musical bully who likes to kick and hit the listener until he or she is completely under her command, rather she is playing with Evangelista, her brutal band, or like this time, making a solo album and calling it her “pop” album, face it, you can receive many things form Carla, but I don’t think you can expect a pop album form her.

Her weary voice is hardly something you could feature in a pop recording, and the powerful bass accompanying her on Aint No Grave is a beast that could hardly be domesticated, Bozulich sounds no different from her Evangelista group output, the big difference here, lies on the musical approach, one detached, weary, torn and broke apart, one closer to jazz free form directionless direction, drums and bass serve more as obstacles, rather than rhythmic companion to Bozulich on the song, Bozulich sounds free, confident and with a strong sense of dangerous, as if the whole thing could fall apart at any second, and that’s just true, Boy is a risky effort that obviously shows Bozulich risking it all, all on her own name, with a final part of the song in which everything collapses leaving Bozulich screaming furious while a guitar is violent strummed, in the sort of affair Lydia Lunch submerged a couple of years ago, although Bozulich approach sounds closer to the Nick Cave we knew in the Birthday Party, animalistic, wild and unexpected.

More on the animalistic sounds of thing shows on One Hard Man, Bozulich sounding here like a female version of Cave old madness, part beast, part the doomed poetry of Patti Smith and guitars ringing madly in the middle of hell, this might not be Bozulich pop record, but it is a stripped version of the industrial noise she used to make in the past, of course there`s something charming on her vocals, but top 40 material, this isn’t for sure, although she manages to ensemble a nice melody on the following song, Downed to the Light which reminds me of Patti Smith a lot, although a Patti Smith gone very, very wrong.

Tribal drums form hell appear on Don’t Follow Me, a very dark recording with some menacing sounds thrown in the mix, Bozulich sounds pretty confident in such dark atmosphere, as she shows no fear towards sounding primitive and foreboding at the same time, in this precise theme, guitars, bass and drums finally mange to click, and move forwards, something unusual thru all the record, as Bozulich likes to keep things minimal.

   

The odd note is thrown by the intro to Gonna Stop Killing, reaching pure noise ambient, but it is interrupted by Bozulich approaching this time something closer to a song, although one submerged in pure doom and gloom, and then returning to the same hyper dark atmospheres in the depressive Deeper than the Well, but all this is kind of put aside on Danceland, a sort of dance club story of something gone really, really wrong, along pretty drugged out musical arrangements, with a Bozulich and his accompanies lurking across the floor in a haze of ganja, perhaps.

If Bozulich refers Boy as his pop album just because it doesn’t sound brutal like Evangelist, we must point here that she has found another violent side to her musical output, one stripped and naked, but no less aggressive, and this time gloomy and dark as hell, boy is a very depressive record, and Bozulich sounds weary and beat to death, reflecting this thru the music and thru the obscure lyrics, a record too dark and depressive to be liked by the audiences, but loved to those who like to walk on the dark side of life.