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Carla dal Forno

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Carla dal Forno, “Come Around” (Kallista, 2022)

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This latest album from Carla dal Forno is her first since relocating to a small town (Castlemaine) in her native Australia and that dramatic change in environment has understandably made quite an impact on her overall vibe (as the album description puts it, she “returns self-assured and firmly settled within the dense eucalypt bushlands”). Fortunately, it seems like the transformation was an entirely favorable one, as literally everything that made dal Forno’s previous work so wonderful and distinctive (ghostly pop hooks, stark bass-driven post-punk grooves, tight songcraft) remains intact. Now, however, her bloodless pop songs are charmingly enhanced with an understated tropical feel as well.

For the most part, Come Around is still light years away from anything like a conventional beach party, but songs like the title piece at least come close to approximating a hypnagogic one. Aside from that, dal Forno also displays some impressive creative evolution on the production side, as these nine songs are a feast of subtle dubwise and psych-inspired touches in the periphery. That said, the primary appeal of Come Around is still the same as ever, as dal Forno remains nearly unerring in churning out songs so strong that they truly do not need anything more than her voice, a cool bass line, and a simple drum machine groove to leave a deep impression.

The opening “Side By Side” is a damn-near perfect illustration of dal Forno’s distinctive strain of indie pop magic, as crashing waves give way to a rubbery, laid-back bass line and a bittersweet, floating vocal melody. Lyrically, dal Forno still seems to be in the throes of heartache, but also comes across as very clear-eyed, confident, and sensuous. That turns out to be quite an effective combination, as these nine songs radiate deadpan cool and wry playfulness while still maintaining palpable human warmth and soulfulness at their core. That alone would be more than enough to carry this album (along with all the great hooks and bouncy slow-motion bass grooves), but dal Forno is also unusually inventive with beats, psychotropic production touches, and the assimilation of unexpected influences this time around. The album’s stellar title piece is a prime example of the latter, as it feels like dal Forno seamlessly mashed together The Shangri-Las and Young Marble Giants to soundtrack a surf movie for ghosts.

The album’s other big highlight is “Stay Awake,” which combines a minimal tropical groove with a morosely funky bass line and spacey psychedelic smears. It is admittedly a bit more overtly melancholy than some of the other pop-minded cuts, but that darker tone is nicely balanced by the propulsive riff, seductive vocals, and Latin-inspired drum machine pattern. It captures how I imagine Joy Division might have sounded post-Ian Curtis if they had relocated to Havana and enlisted a femme fatale frontwoman instead of reinventing themselves as New Order (a missed opportunity, for sure). The more upbeat “Mind You’re On” is another fine would-be single, as dal Forno adds finger snaps and bird-like warbles to the mix, as well as a wonderfully poignant final hook (“it’s ok, ok, ok, you’re on my mind”).

The remaining five songs are characteristically solid (if divergent) for the most part as well, though they tend to be a bit less hook-focused (aside from “Slumber,” a duet with Thomas Bush). Obviously, some more hot singles would have been welcome, but the occasional instrumental or buzzing descent into psychedelia work quite nicely from a sequencing standpoint, as Come Around is an absorbing and evocative whole. Admittedly, I still have yet to warm to the sleepily ethereal closer (“Caution”), but this is yet another excellent album from dal Forno and easily features some of her strongest songwriting to date (at least three instant classics, by my count).

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Carla dal Forno, “Look Up Sharp” (Kallista, 2019)

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The downside to releasing a beloved and perfectly distilled EP like The Garden is that there will eventually have to be a follow-up to it and people will expect it to be every bit as good (if not better) than its predecessor. That is an unenviable level of creative pressure to be confronted with, but Carla dal Forno seems to have passed through it with grace and aplomb (and even managed to start her own record label along the way). To her credit, dal Forno was not at all interested in making The Garden II, though her subsequent cover album (Top of the Pops) seems to have provided a rough template, as she has clearly been thinking a lot about what goes into constructing a good and memorable pop song. 

Having internalized that, she then wrote a bunch of her own. In a broad sense, it is very apparent that dal Forno is heavily influenced by the classic minimalist post-punk/indie pop of Young Marble Giants and AC Marias, but the best songs on Look Up Sharp feel like an inspired update rather than a loving homage, as she strikes a truly elegant balance of pared-to-the-bone starkness, muscular bass riffs, casual sensuousness, and understated experimentation.

Notably, both dal Forno’s new Kallista imprint and Look Up Sharp made their teasingly brief first appearances earlier this year with the “So Much Better” 7″ single. As far as lead singles go, that half-lilting/half-biting break-up song was a solid pick, as it is an appealingly sincere and direct song that nevertheless packs quite a scathing sentiment in its lurching, slow-motion melancholy. While the explicit sentiment is very clearly “I am done with you and I am moving forward,” the rest of the album seems to address love and heartache a bit more tenderly, sensually, and poetically, so I suspect “So Much Better” was one of the earliest pieces composed for this album. 

It would make sense if it was, as some of the other songs on the album elevate dal Forno’s constrained palette of bass/drum machine/voice into something so much better than “So Much Better.” In fact, barring a few instrumentals, just about every single song on Look Up Sharp could be a strong single. While her impressive knack for crafting tight songs with great hooks has been evident right from the beginning (see “Fast Moving Cars”), dal Forno has gotten much more skilled at weeding out her weaker material over the years. 

She has also evolved quite a bit from the comparatively bloodless, reverb-swathed murkiness of her ghostly early work. The end result of those two transformations is that the Carla dal Forno of 2019 has a truly impressive hit-to-miss ratio and her best moments make a much deeper impact than the more style-driven fare of You Know What it is Like. She has always had a very cool and distinctive aesthetic, but the songs at the foundation of that aesthetic now feel honest and open in a more meaningful way.

To my ears, there are at least two stone-cold, instant classics lurking among these ten songs.My favorite piece by a landslide is “Don’t Follow Me,” which is built from a lovely, multitracked vocal motif that feels almost like a choral hymnal. From there, it ingeniously blossoms into a lazily smoldering groove of corroded bass tones, a spartan kick/snare pattern, chiming chord stabs, and a shifting nimbus of lysergic swells and melody fragments. It is probably the most beautiful song on the album, but it also benefits greatly from the ramshackle, blackened accompaniment that relentlessly stomps forward beneath the floating, heavenly vocals. The contrast between those two poles is absolutely perfect, as dal Forno evokes angelic beauty in a ragged and ruined landscape (and then brings it all to a close with actual fireworks). 

The other highlight is “Took A Long Time,” which skillfully combines a meaty descending bass line, a clattering drum machine shuffle, and great vocal hook, then gradually warms and fills with color as synth tones languorously undulate in the periphery. There is also second tier of songs that are nearly as great, such as the opening “No Trace,” which augments a heavy, rolling groove with streaking, spaced-out splashes of synth color. 

Elsewhere, “I’m Conscious” unfolds as a wonderfully shambling meditation on longing and regret. Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the album’s instrumentals are quite likable as well, even if they are mostly palette-cleansers to bridge the more fully formed pieces. I especially like “Hype Sleep,” which marries a warm, ringing bass melody to a tinny, vaguely Latin drum machine groove. I actually wish dal Forno had explored that direction a bit more, as understatedly playful drum machine beats are an excellent counterbalance to her more introspective, hypnagogic side.

I also enjoyed the dreamily lush and melodic “Leaving For Japan,” which is a side of dal Forno’s art that I rarely get to encounter. To some degree, I would be absolutely delighted if she eased up her constrained aesthetic to allow for more pieces in that vein, but I suspect she is reluctant to record many songs that she cannot perform live with just a bass. Aside from that practical consideration, the extremely minimal instrumentation of dal Forno’s work is admittedly an extremely effective approach artistically. There are a lot of ways to craft a great song, but dal Forno consistently challenges herself to do it in the hardest way possible at this point in her career: writing hooks and melodies strong enough to carry a piece even if all of the accompanying music, production touches, and arrangement flourishes were completely stripped away. 

That is what I admire most about Carla dal Forno’s work. She is an excellent songwriter and has lots of creative ideas for fleshing out her simple, bass-driven pieces, but the larger achievement is that she is just a woman with a bass who is very intent on making a direct and undiluted human connection with listeners. I suppose such a fearless and assured avoidance to artistic distance and artifice would not matter much if Look Up Sharp did not also have great songs, but it has those too, which is why exactly Carla dal Forno remains one of the most compelling and vital songwriters in underground music.

Samples can be found here.

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Carla dal Forno, “Top of the Pops” (Self-Released, 2018)

Originally only available on cassette during dal Forno’s summer tour, this EP of six eclectic covers is now available digitally. As anyone who has heard her occasional NTS Radio DJ appearances can attest, dal Forno has delightfully wide-ranging taste and definitely appreciates a great hook when she hears it, so it is not at all surprising that there are some extremely deep cuts here (The Kiwi Animal) mingled with a few names that actually have spent time at the top of the pop charts (Lana del Ray and The B-52s). While the latter’s early “Give Me Back My Man” undergoes quite an impressive transformation, Carla is generally quite reverent with her source material, taking a handful of great songs and simply paring them down to their stark and intimate essence.

I generally shy away from tour-only releases these days, as I eventually realized (much later than I should have) that they are almost never very good and are mostly just noteworthy for their scarcity. Consequently, I did not start salivating over Top of the Pops when “Summertime Sadness” surfaced as a teaser, though it is certainly a likably ghostly and skeletal channeling of Lana del Ray. An all-covers EP just seemed like kind of a fun, throw-away release strictly for superfans, which is rarely a category I find myself in. However, I probably should have learned something from Marisa Nadler’s cover albums, which sneakily include some of her finest work, as similar feat occurs with Pops. 

Obviously, Nadler and dal Forno are quite different artists, but they share one extremely significant trait: both have a very distinctive and instantly recognizable style. As such, any cover song that passes through that transformative filter stops feeling like a cover and feels very much like something new. In dal Forno’s case, that signature style is a half-sultry/half-spectral minimalism built from just her voice, a simple bass line, and a scratchy, ramshackle drum machine beat. Occasionally, she will also throw in some wobbly, understated synthesizer, but it is generally a deceptively simple and incredibly effective aesthetic.The music is just substantial enough to provide a sense of momentum, but nothing is forceful or busy enough to ever steal the focus from the vocals. Top of the Pops feels a lot like finding a worn and forgotten mixtape and happily discovering that all the parts that truly matter still manage to break through the hiss and flutter.

Much like The Garden, Top of the Pops is an EP where every single song feels like a strong single. I suppose that makes some sense for an all-cover release, but neither Lilliput nor Una Baine’s solo project The Fates are best remembered for their chart dominance. Also, my attempt to hear the original version of The Kiwi Animal’s “Blue Morning” was entirely fruitless (though my search did yield roughly a million videos of adorable birds). I was also completely unfamiliar with ’80s Dutch pop band Renée, whose opening “Lay Me Down” is one of Pops‘ strongest songs. The original is a fairly slick bit of sultry New Wave-y pop and dal Forno sticks quite close to the original structure and melody. However, she ingeniously replaces the muted guitars and jazzy synths with a delightfully lurching and clopping groove that is even more fun than the original. 

The plinking and bouncy “Blue Morning” is similarly excellent, recounting heartache in unexpectedly poetic and poignant fashion.Still more impressive are the feats of alchemy that Carla pulls off with The Fates’ “No Romance” and The B-52s “Give Me Back My Man. “To my ears, neither of the original pieces quite worked, but it turns out that they both just needed a bit of restructuring. In the case of “No Romance,” it was a great song that was just too anemic-sounding and too sing-song, so dal Forno made the vocal melody a bit more sensuous and fluid and carved away almost everything except for a muscular and insistently thumping beat. “Give Me Back My Man,” on the other hand, was a driving rocker with a cool riff that was just a bit too weird and lacking in a strong verse melody to quite stand with band’s best work. In this case, Carla opted to completely rebuild the song from the ground up, leaving only the lyrics and a ghost of the melody. That perverse strategy worked brilliantly, as the piece is reborn as haunting and seductive new piece with slow, sexy groove.

With “Give Me Back My Man,” dal Forno transcends her source material so thoroughly that it is more like a great new original song than a mere cover. In fact, it is probably one of my favorite songs that she has recorded to date, so it was definitely a wise decision to give this EP a more widespread reach. One fresh classic would have been enough to make me delighted about this modest release, but there is not a single weak or even middling song to be found. While the song choices are all unwaveringly cool and the arrangements are frequently inspired, Top of the Pops succeeds on a deeper level as well, as dal Forno manages to playfully indulge her more fun and hook-loving side without sacrificing much of her intensity or depth. While some of the lyrics are admittedly more flirty, breezy, and sexy than usual, the right singer can bring new and previously hidden shades of meaning and soul to just about anything and dal Forno has found a way to make even The B-52s seem enigmatic and introspective with this release.

Listen here.

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Carla dal Forno, “The Garden” (Blackest Ever Black, 2017)

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Carla dal Forno’s latest EP is an absolute stunner, distilling her dark pop genius into four perfect gems of dreamy, intimate, haunted, and endearingly ramshackle beauty. Aside from being four of the finest songs that she has ever recorded (any one of these pieces could be a single), The Garden is most striking for the improbable collision of influences that dal Forno seems to balance effortlessly: in a perverse way, this Australian dreampop chanteuese might be the most perfect and transcendent embodiment of the Blackest Ever Black aesthetic. 

While her songs are certainly catchy and propulsive (a inarguable anomaly in that milieu), The Garden‘s feast of hooks blossoms out of an ultra-DIY/underground backdrop of stark and gritty basslines, primative drum machine clatter, tape hiss, and warped electronics. At its best, The Garden sounds like a singularly muscular and half-sexy/half-unnerving dreampop album that is too well informed by the darker, uglier undercurrents of post-punk and early industrial to ever lapse into soft-focus navel-gazing.

The opening “We Shouldn’t Have to Wait” is possibly the most lovely song on the entire EP, yet almost sounds like it could have been recorded on a crappy tape deck in a bleak warehouse in Manchester in 1981. That collision of beauty, vulnerability, intimacy, and industrial decay seems to be where dal Forno truly thrives. The essence of the song, of course, is dal Forno’s lovely, bittersweet, and reverb-swathed vocal melody. A lot of artists in this vein tend to reverb their vocals into abstract soft-focus oblivion, but dal Forno employs just enough to give her confessional and half-seductive/half-wounded vocals a subtle ghostly unreality. 

The underlying music is quite striking as well, as the piece is essentially just built from a meaty, raw-sounding, and extremely simple bass line over a starkly clattering and echoing drum machine pattern. There is also some brooding synth coloration and fluttering electronic weirdness in the periphery, but the actual meat of the piece is about as hyper-minimalist and pared-down as it is possibly to get, as Carla’s voice does absolutely all of the heavy lifting. It basically feels like she just just plugged in her bass, hit “record,” and some kind of occult pop magic happened.

The following “Clusters” is no less haunting and dreamlike, but it is a bit more rhythmic and experimental, as Carla’s lyrics are culled from recontextualized text from magazines and the underlying music achieves kind of a weirdly lurching and rolling groove. Again, “Clusters” would probably still be great if all of the music vanished, but I would not want it to, as dal Forno wrests some wonderfully wobbly, woozy, and strangled-sounding textures out of her synths. Blackest Ever Black compare “Clusters” to Broadcast, which is not far from the mark, but it feels more like dal Forno is singing over a Broadcast instrumental being played at the wrong speed on partially blown speakers.

“Make Up Talk” is the sort of song that feels composed specifically for me, as it pared down to nothing except a propulsive yet distant-sounding martial drum machine thump, a simple bass groove, and a hallucinatory nimbus of reverberating bird-like chirps and industrial clatter. There is no clutter, just a handful of great motifs artfully combined in service of an extremely cool song that marches relentlessly forward amidst a hallucinatory storm of low-level lysergic mindfuckery. 

The closing Einstürzende Neubauten homage “The Garden” is probably the purest distillation of dal Forno’s skewed and shadowy pop genius of all, however, reducing the backdrop to little more than a two-note bass line and an eerie glass harp-esque melody. Naturally, it also one of her strongest compositions, as its languorous and lilting vocal melody would have been one of the best songs on the EP even if it were strictly a capella. 

Happily, it is not though, as I very much enjoy its swaying and dreamlike waltz feel, as well as the occasional strangled snarl of feedback or woozily rippling synth tone. That, in essence, illustrates one of my absolute favorite features of The Garden: all four songs are so well-crafted, seductive, and haunting that they would be great if dal Forno just played bass and sang them into a boombox. No artifice at all was needed to make them work, yet her artful balance of hissing, lo-fi textures and hallucinatory synth and electronic flourishes elevates them to another level altogether.

I have to admit that this EP kind of blindsided me, as it feels like a major creative breakthrough that I did not see coming. Before The Garden, I viewed dal Forno as a solid artist who occasionally turned out a wonderfully bloodless and deadpan post-punk-influenced gem.With The Garden, she seems to have become an artist who ONLY writes great songs, dispelling much of the ghostly detachment of her earlier work to make a more direct emotional connection. Also, it now feels like dal Forno owns her stylistic niche quite definitively—instead of trying to spot her influences, I will now likely be describing other artists (in my head, at least) as “trying very hard to sound like Carla dal Forno” (and presumably failing). 

This truly is a perfect EP, as there is not a misstep to be found and each of these four songs has been jostling to be my favorite for weeks. Every single one is built upon a great hook, carved down to its unadulterated soul, and executed with unerring dynamic, textural, and melodic instincts. It is a no-brainer to say that this is easily the strongest release of dal Forno’s career, but it is probably also safe to say that this is one of the strongest releases of 2017 by anyone, full-stop.

Listen here.