Search - Simone Massaron;Carla Bozulich :: DANDELIONS ON FIRE - Featuring Carla Bozulich

I may have had a religious experience to one of these songs

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 06/20/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Don't let the "featuring Carla Bozulich" fool you. This is as much a Carla album as any Fibbers or Evangelista album. She wrote all the lyrics and sings on every track. If the Evangelistas are too Out There for you (or even if they're not), Get Thee Wallet out for this one.



Electrically earthy and beautiful, there are songs here that manage to add much needed heart and grit to electric blues (something which most electric "blues artists" have lacked for decades now), as well as bring old-timey mountain music raging into the 21st Century. I Saw Him strikes me as merging the wounded spirit of Lloyd Chandler's Conversation With Death (from High Atmosphere) with the outer limits DemonLoveGod sermon of Evangelista. Call it the sound of the scarily wonderful side of the pulsing heart of the American upland South, because it's certainly nothing like the fluff you'll hear on CMT or your local country-pop Shania and Toby station of drivel.



Someone recently told me they love Carla because her music is "difficult". I wasn't sure what's difficult about it. My reply was that she wraps me in a dark blanket of love. Simone Massaron can remain one of her new best buddies. He plays beautifully throughout, and he composed/arranged the music, leaving the lyrics to Carla. What came first, the lyrics, melodies or music/instrumentation? I don't know, but it works.



From My Hometown which sounds like a tipsy, funhouse mirror version of something you could hear at a Cheapsuit Serenaders gig, to Love Me Mine which would have been the perfect Bozulich/Garcia/Grisman tune, this album creates a tapestry that stands well apart from Evangelista territory, yet it remains decisively, gloriously CARLA. This and Hello, Voyager mean she is on a serious roll in 2008."