As Carla Bozulich enters her fourth decade of uncompromising, unceasing devotion to artpunk
ethics and creativity, the nomadic singer-composer-writer-artist has recently been
hanging her hat back in Los Angeles. After years of tireless vagabondage in pursuit of DIY
performance opportunities wherever they might take her - and following her extraordinary,
widely acclaimed 2014 album Boy - Bozulich has lately found herself a bit more settled in
one place, keeping busy with a number of archival and reissue projects.
Her first (and classic) 2003 solo album Red Headed Stranger was re-released by Folktale
Records in 2016 and her mid-90s band The Geraldine Fibbers' equally classic 1995 album
Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home was reissued on Jealous Butcher
Records in 2017. Carla also penned the devastatingly poetic and powerful rape-survival
essay "Thanks, Motherfucker" for The Quietus in 2016. And of course she's continued
playing venues small and large, including OFF Festival in 2017, opening for Godspeed
You! Black Emperor in 2015, and for Swans at their farewell NYC shows in 2017.
This recent period has also found Bozulich reflecting on 25+ years of life on the road, the
labour and hustle of DIY touring, with its ecstasies, agonies, succour and sacrifice: "still a
fantastic job to have" as Carla writes in the liner notes to her new album Quieter.
Quieter is an enchanting collection of previously orphaned and one-off tracks, a couple
left over from the bountifully productive Boy sessions, others featuring collaborations
with the likes of Marc Ribot, Sarah Lipstate (Noveller), Freddy Ruppert, Shahzad Ismaily
and more. The album is the result of Bozulich sifting through unreleased/unfinished
material, recovering from tour-inflicted ear-damage, and being drawn to the quieter stuff
(relatively speaking) in her abundant archives. Ranging from the searching, searing
opener "Let It Roll" - "the most honest work I've ever done" says Carla - to the chiming,
deconstructed lullabies of "Glass House" (composed by Ruppert) and "Sha Sha" (with her
mid-2000s project The Night Porter) and the album's sultry closing track "End Of The
World"(a duet with Ribot, who penned the song), Quieter is a brilliant addition to
Bouzlich's impressively diverse, adventurous, and unwaveringly authentic body of work.
Thanks for listening.
