Albums
CARM
2021
Genre: Alternative
Release Date: 2021
By Matthew Strauss
Reviewed February 2, 2021
On his solo debut—assisted by Sufjan Stevens, Justin Vernon, and Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan—the multi-instrumentalist rethinks the horn’s role as an album’s driving creative force.
CJ Camerieri, the horn-playing co-founder of chamber ensemble yMusic, begins and ends his debut solo album with repose; in between, there is murk. Camerieri has recorded with Paul Simon, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, the National, and, once, Taylor Swift, and two of those famous friends, Stevens and Justin Vernon, join him on the album’s bookending songs. Expectedly, they’re the most familiar-sounding entries on . “Song of Trouble,” co-written and arranged with Stevens, begins with a procession of Camerieri’s brass and is tenderly blotted with French horn and trumpet as it develops into a recognizable Stevens hymn. “Land,” featuring Vernon, is graceful and pastoral. They are light moments on an otherwise overcast album, one that is often surprising in structure, if not mood.