Customer Reviews

Hello, Voyager

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For those who are unaware, Evangelista is Carla Bozulich's new band: Carla being the lead singer of The Geraldine Fibbers and a member of Ethyl Meatplow. Carla's second solo album was called Evangelista, and this album is being released under the Evangelista band name: it is a band, thanks largely to the collaboration of the terrific Tara Barnes. (Got all that?)

This album harkens to everything Carla's done before: her voice can be empathetic and also playful and it can be loud and anguished-sounding. There's a lot of moments where instruments are strung together creating walls of sound. There are jazzy moments, head-banging moments, and soulful pretty heartbreaking moments because Carla really knows how to incorporate a string section in places where it usually never travels. If you know her past work, you know the drill and probably have the album. If you don't, welcome to a strange and wonderful world.

Along with Carla and Tara, the core band for the recorded version of Evangelista includes jack-of-all-musical-trades Shahzad Ismaily. Guests include members of A Silver Mount Zion including very-short-time Geraldine Fibber Jessica Moss, and in a special guest cameo, Carla's long-time collaborator Nels Cline. Also, there's this really gorgeous song called "The Blue Room" that words don't do justice to.

Due to pre-ordering from Constellation I expected to get this on or after 3/11/08 but it arrived on 3/1 so I've been deep in Carla Bozulich's new marvel every day for over a week.

This floors me. I loved the first Evangelista album instantly, and still do. My first listen caused me to lie there afterwards in stunned silence. Hello, Voyager (as a whole) took me a few listens, though there were passages that blew me away upon my first play. By the 5th listen I was aware that this is a great album. It keeps growing.

Carla is incredible here. She is the High Priestess of something or other. It's like she and the Evangelista bands (Tara Barnes bass and co-writing, Shahzad Ismaily guitars & drums, Nadia Moss organ, and quite the bunch of other folks as well... sometimes on the instruments already listed) are trying to shake the Modern World out of our lost humanity. There were a few songs I wasn't freaking out about initially but I could not stop listening to the album. Now I can't get enough of it. The punishing doom-rock of Smooth Jazz... a bit like The Terminator driving an 18-wheeler over cars or through walls. Truth is Dark Like Outer Space... the first couple times I heard it I was thinking "wow, I hate this song". Then somehow it later became the song I most often find myself singing, knowing it'll be the sweatiest, most danceable song at the concerts. Yes, danceable! I know we weren't dancing to the first album.

How many artists become more ferociously pure the older they get? Often people turn to codifying what they've done previously, trying to tidy it up into the type of brand-name packaging that makes retirement easier. Not Carla. She's not rearranging her past only to stick a red ribbon on it and call it her future. I haven't mentioned the highest, most devastating moments of the album. What could I say? This album... her voice... no review I can write will do justice to what she and this band possess and unleash, yet there's a gentle, chamber quartet quality at times now also. If you care enough to be reading this review, do yourself a favor and buy the album.

Voyager is honest, hurt, and at times even sexy like a raven. It has the dark wisdom of an ancient, sly-smiling mystical prankster. I listened to it for almost my 30th time just a few hours ago. I had tears streaming down my face 3 times throughout the album. I don't know if I found her or if she found me but I'll always be grateful our paths crossed.

The West is the best and no one will forget Carla's name after hearing this one.

Hello, Voyager is not some cliché of healing, yet there is a sense of satisfaction in the growl of this disjointed flotilla of mangled orchestration, string quintets, stark intimate songs and eidolic production. There is a moment a few minutes into the last track, a determined pile of percussion, trumpet, hushed feedback, shouts-turned-to-screams, background yelps and staccato guitar discharges, when you hear Carla Bozulich, say "ow!" (a drumming injury, I'm told). This is the same word going through your head as you peep from behind your hands during the previous eight tracks. It is not, however, the "ow" as in "ow, what a broken-hearted song" you felt on Bozulich and brilliant company's previous record, Evangelista (so much to communicate, still, they named the band after the album, perhaps). Now, the "ow" is the one you scream as you jump from the window of your drunk daddy's burning house. Yes, he is inside.