Kara-Lis Coverdale, “From Where You Came” (Smalltown Supersound, 2025)

I was beginning to despair that I may never hear a new Kara-Lis Coverdale album ever again, as it has been eight years since the Montreal-based composer last surfaced with the stellar Grafts EP (the strongest release of her career). This latest release is definitely not what I was expecting as a follow up, however, as it often resembles an ‘80s New Age synth visionary attempting to perform a hypnagogic live soundtrack to a classic Disney fairytale, but a mischievous projectionist spliced in some surprise scenes from a vampire film, a kooky carnival, and a tropical vacation to keep her on her toes.

The fairytale that I envision is quite a unique one though, as the plot that I imagine is that a cool princess in a magic crystal castle emerges every evening to give an eclectic freeform Mellotron concert to an enraptured audience of unicorns and delightful woodland creatures who love every single allusion to 20th century jazz and avant-garde composers or 19th century programmatic music.  Nothing bad or frightening ever happens (aside from the occasional dissonant harmony or viscerally slicing texture) and everyone lives happily ever after.

That is admittedly not stylistic terrain that I ever expected to embrace, but these pieces are so charmingly playful, unpredictably experimental, and full of wonder that I quickly fell in love with this album in spite of myself. Even the darker moments have their share of endearingly wonky bits, as the lurching, gasping, and scraping industrial groove of album highlight “Offload Flip” erupts into a deliriously squirming and jazzy synth solo around the halfway point. 

Elsewhere, the Fourth World-inspired “Daze” suggests something between a Tim Hecker residency in the lounge of an exclusive tropical resort and something you’d hear playing in a New Age bookstore after dark when they bring out the wild stuff (like a secret tape of ayahuasca-fueled Laurie Spiegel improvisations or something). As for the remaining pieces, the evoke everything from a Siren’s fogbank serenade to a newly cured vampire greeting his first sunrise to a dueling synth showdown at a Renn Faire to a slowly deflating brass band being gradually engulfed by a swell of blissed-out synths. In short, this is a memorably fun, inventive, and freewheeling album. It may not much resemble the Kara-Lis Coverdale that I thought I knew, but the current Kara-Lis Coverdale has one hell of a wild and oft-revelatory vision.

Listen here.