Carm – Carm
The music of Carm features horns in roles typically reserved for drums, guitars, and voices, while also escaping the genre categorisations reserved for music featuring an instrumentalist as bandleader. It is not jazz or classical music, nor is it a soundtrack. This is contemporary popular music that features a sound normally used as a background colour and texture as the unabashed lead voice.
Produced in Minneapolis by Ryan Olson (Polica, Lizzo) and featuring collaborations with Sufjan Stevens, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Yo La Tengo, Shara Nova, Mouse on Mars, Francis and the Lights and many others. It is a completely unique sound that additionally serves as a survey of the collaborations that have come to define the artist’s career thus far. The album begins with an orchestral brass choir of french horns, which quickly gives way to a piano sample from Francis, as Stevens and Lupin combine voices over a lush bed of horns to sing Song of Trouble.
The album bookends with the same piano sample used as a springboard to an iconic lyric by Vernon in the album closer Land. Between these two generation-defining artists we have upward sweeping melodies and fanfares reminiscent of Ennio Morricone. The acutely original sound of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo in Already Gone give way to the virtuoso sound of Nova’s voice. A more experimental path emerges before the strings from yMusic bring us back to the piano sample that started the record. Instead of recycling well-trodden sounds, Carm offers a respite for those seeking an original voice
