Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raw, rugged, and cool, April 23, 2004
By A Customer
If you find this CD "grating", as one reviewer suggested, you would probably be happier with some sort of Lillith-Fair coffeehouse-girl-with-acoustic-guitar type of album. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But this isn't it. This CD is full of naked emotion, gritty guitar arrangements, and one of the most entrancing voices I've heard in a long time. Carina is at times throaty, soulful, and even bluesy. At others she wails like a banshee in true rock-goddess form. Comparisons to Sarah McLachlan, etc. are totally inappropriate. I think she lies closer to the likes of P.J. Harvey and Patti Smith. Songs like "Shoot", "Into My Blood", and "Monument" have a raw energy that is impossible to ignore. I challenge you to sit still while she sings "I wait all my life/Just for the rush/The passing of fire/Into my blood" before the music explodes into a gorgeous wall of sound. Seeing her live is almost like watching some sort of exorcism. This CD is not to be missed - I am looking forward to much more from this incredibly talented woman.
|
|
|
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars for Voice Only, March 25, 2004
It's been years since a female vocalist's voice captured me as much as Carina Round. THE DISCONNECTION is an album full of promise, and for her unbelievable voice, her impassioned delivery and musical ambition I've dared award this recording five stars. Indeed, I'd grant the compositions four stars, the back-up three stars and the production two stars. Not to mention the fact that my copy was factory wrapped -- and scratched. But all complaints aside, this young woman has potential to do anything with her voice. In lounge, she would blow Norah Jones right out of the bar. In well-composed, well-produced rock, she'd rise to the top like a bubble in a glass of champagne. The cuts "Shout," "Lacuna" and "Paris" are especially fine, and despite any obstacles, she saves the day and then burns it up. The music vacillates between hard and loud and soft and searching, and the sequence works. One hopes that next time 'round, this very talented artist -- who has an intuitive feel for lyrics, articulation, delivery -- will have the chance to work with a producer who believes in her enough to bankroll a stronger production. But she captured me anyway, and at the current offering price you'd be crazy not to discover someone who will one day be a leading vocal talent.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Keep Her Inside, October 11, 2004
On her website, Carina Round describes her second album, "The Disconnection" as "confronting things like joy, anger, pain and confusion and letting them go." Absent of a better way to describe the album, Round provides the compliment. The album is rough and raw, uptempo and slowly melodic.
The Disconnection is probably one of the best things you've heard in a good while. Round is oft compared to PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, maybe even Sinead O'Connor, but rest easy knowing that the 9-track disc is not another copy of a copy. Round combines simplistic piano melodies with random, invigorating electric guitars and a steady drum beat. That said, every song changes.
Highlights: "Into My Blood" (an uptempo song; "I wait all my life/Just for the rush/The passing of fire/Into my blood") and "Monument" (also uptempo and aggressive: "Red lights, cars zoom past/ New York had a heart attack/ Screaming into a new world" the harmonies here are beautiful) and "Lacuna" ("There's a lot to be/ Said for this morbid self-attention/ The problem lies in my external obsession/ Animal is hungry been sleeping for far too long/ Gonna fill this lacuna somehow")
Simply, this is an awesome album. Listen once, relax, then listen again and again. Let it sink in.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Carina Round 
