As with such well-traveled peers as Thalia Zedek or Michael Gira, Carla Bozulich has spent decades navigating the art-rock underground through sheer tenacity and a fierce commitment to her own distinctive musical vision. Throughout her career as a solo artist, with her various groups (Ethyl Meatplow, Geraldine Fibbers, Evangelista), and with a motley assortment of collaborations and guest appearances, she has charted a course that appears almost specifically designed to win a fervent cult following while keeping most others at arm’s length. Her recent albums with Evangelista have been delivered with such abrasive, primal force and emotive intensity as to be genuinely intimidating for the unsuspecting listener.
So even though Bozulich proclaims her latest solo album, Boy, as her version of a “pop record,” a sense of perspective is important. It's true that Boy showcases a renewed focus on standard song construction and forward propulsion compared to such albums as Evangelista’s Hello, Voyager or In Animal Tongue, but there’s nothing here that's as immediate or pop-centered as Geraldine Fibbers at their most accessible; it's a safe bet to assume that the days of Bozulich performing relatively straight covers of Dolly Parton or Beck songs are a thing of the past. But Boy is filled with memorable songs that are full-muscled enough to withstand whatever level of barbed deconstruction that Bozulich throws at them, making it her most approachable album in a while.
On Evangelista’s 2011 brooding In Animal Tongue, Bozulich followed one particular stream of inspiration all the way to its murky headwaters, as she and her collaborators created a dense sonic atmosphere that abandoned conventional rock textures almost entirely. Several tracks on that album eliminated rhythmic momentum altogether, so it comes as a mild relief when Bozulich immediately dispels any lingering sense of claustrophobia by kicking off Boy with "Ain't No Grave", proclaiming “Ain’t no grave that can hold me down” over a dramatic stab of bass and Andrea Belfi’s fluid drumming.
As with Bozulich’s past work, Boy makes frequent reference to various country, gospel, and blues traditions, and those influences are refracted in ways that surprise and unsettle. Such slow-simmering tracks as “Don’t Follow Me” or the hypnotic “What Is It Baby” sound like distant relations to standard country or folk-blues songs, stretched and attenuated in a such a way that their punches never quite seem to land where you expect them. Boy's most straightforward song, “Lazy Crossbones”, features an electric piano shuffle and downright catchy “Ba-da-da-da” chorus competing for space with hazy interjections of feedback and abstract layers of tape noise. Bozulich’s earthy voice remains a unique and malleable instrument, and here she inhabits the shifting landscapes of her songs with authority and deceptive ease.
Bozulich’s vocals are so forceful and transfixing, in fact, that it's easy to overlook her skill as an arranger and sound artist. Playing the majority of the instruments herself, Bozulich specializes in creating combinations of sounds and textures that continually loosen the songs' moorings. The Tom Waits-like grind of the lusty “One Hard Man” is punctuated by vivid blasts of industrial noise, while distant strings echo through “Drowned to the Light” like fading spirits. At her best, Bozulich uses the vernacular song forms of country, blues, and yes, even “pop”, to tap into something that feels much more elemental, a vein of primitive emotion that feels like it could pre-date the notion of musical genres entirely. Her work on Boy should be sufficient to satisfy her longtime followers and perhaps draw some new onlookers into the fold.
