Customer Reviews

Prince of Truth (Dig)

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I heard this played on a college station recently and had to have it. The music is haunting and speaks to your soul. I find myself more into the music than I think while listening. Don't miss out on this.

So many great records this year like Shannon Wright - Honeybee Girls, Lisa Germano - Magic Neighbor, Joe Henry - Blood from Stars, Tiny Vipers - Life on Earth, to name a few, but Prince of Tuth is truly breathtaking, philosophical, enigmatic and at times very scary. And is for me album of the year, better than Hello, Voyager, it is more resolute and interconnected, I kinda thought Voyager (brilliant as it was), was almost fragmented, there seemed to be tracks that just fell into the record, personally for me though Carla's solo Evangelista is a little better and is one of the albums of the decade.

Frightening and fragile. Loud, murderous and innocent. Prince of Truth is tremendous. Via the magic of pre-ordering from Constellation a couple months ago I've had this album for 11 days. Prince of Truth. The phrase haunts me now. I've never listened to any one album as many times in a week-and-a-half as I have this. Play it loudly. Deep immersion.

Something is revealed here. It's never obviously stated. It's the unspoken realities of the human world. It's us. In The Slayer and On The Captain's Side we're being spoken to, from our pasts, our futures, ourselves and our present. It's utterly frightening in tone... in its implications... yet aurally beautiful. The confidence, swagger and sonic shock of The Slayer breathes life and menace into lyrics that you'll find elusive on the page. The indifferent slayer touches the lives of us all, to varying degrees.

Our shared truth is one of willingness, of genuine human fears, motivations and manipulations. I feel complicit, exalted, liberated, hopeless and revitalized.

We're a sparkly lot though, for a little while anyway. Some of us remember marveling at dragonflies when ponds were as big as oceans. Some of us have danced to grooves that would tickle William Parker and Hamid Drake. What a beautiful world we started in.

Maybe this is all in my head. Maybe you'll hear something else.

Has any cathedral anywhere on earth reverberated with the mystery, reverence and as serenely menacing a vision of humanity as comes forth in On the Captain's Side? Oh man. That last cruel song.

BUT... Don't drink and listen to this. If a group of artists are going to go to the trouble of doing THIS... if they were able to allow THIS to pass through them and out to us... don't wreck it by sitting there drunk and stupid. If you have to go chemical, go for more sensation. Heightened awareness, not dulled and desensitized. You deserve it.

If Goya could be brought to 10/6/09 (and if he could hear), he'd have loved this. I've written 400-something reviews here. Prince of Truth stands alone as we'll all fall together.

How can you even describe this music? Mind-blowing? Brain-kidnapping? I have been a big fan of Carla and everything she does since I discovered her "Evangelista - Hello Voyager!" album. There are few artists around with that level of honesty, emotion and truthfulness. It's a shame she doesn't have more recognition!

To start the review of this album, Prince of Truth, I would like somebody to explain the cover for me. Is that a symbolic sexual union of a demonic goat and a woman, or is it just my dirty mind? In a way, it may have many hidden meanings beyond that. Could it also be a reference to the temptation in the Garden of Even and the fall of mankind?

Now talking about the music, though it is certainly slower and a little less intense than both of her previous "Evangelista" works, I think this is a good follow-up to the concept. I like this idea of complete dissonance, lack of harmony and pattern; just a free expression of one's soul without any limits or restrains. Carla is the main responsable for my current dislike for harmonic music, I am addicted to the bizarre and raw emotions of her sounds... Evangelista is like dope!

The slayer, You are a jaguar and Iris didn't spell are my favorites on this album, but it doesn't mean the other tracks are weak; in fact they give great cohesion to the musical concept and are IMO stronger than the weaker tracks of her first Evangelista album. I liked that she returned to a more "conceptual" approach for this album, leaving aside the "track-by-track" sound of "Hello Voyager!". Hello Voyager! is still intense and I love most of its tracks (The blue room is my absolute favorite song from her), but it lacked a bit of "atmosphere".

This is an extremely enjoyable experience for those with a taste for the bizarre.