Carla Bozulich – Boy

Album Review by Bram E. Gieben | 28 Feb 2014
Album title: Boy
Artist: Carla Bozulich
Label: Constellation
Release date: 3 Mar

A veteran of the LA alternative and avant garde music scene, Carla Bozulich uses Boy to align herself with other practitioners of skewed, angular takes on high-concept pop without descending to the use of saccharine studio sheen, glossy promo shoots, or dumbed-down lyrics. Like EMA, St. Vincent or Emika, Bozulich is keyed in to the true meaning of the Gaga-devalued phrase 'art pop.' Her lyrics are claustrophobic confessionals, her songs immaculate dirges and murder ballads.

Bozulich's voice, at times redolent of Kristin Hersh and Patti Smith, is the perfect vehicle for the deconstructed beat poetry of opener and title track Boy. The mournful, funereal Drowned To The Light and Gonna Stop Killing are both bleak but exquisite, rounded out with esoteric instrumentation; while the album's closing section – the crepuscular shoegaze of What Is It Baby and the minimalist post-rock of Number X – offers a balm to the preceding darkness. 

http://www.carlabozulich.com