By Keith Walsh
Listening to the new album, Goners, by Renee-Louise Carafice, I’m suddenly struck by the uniqueness of it. I’m talking about the sounds, for sure – the album is all electronic except for voice and just one or two guitar tracks. But another truly unique aspect of this stunning ten track disc is found in its concept: it’s entirely devoted to grieving for pets who have passed and crossed over the rainbow bridge.
“I lost five pets in one year, so it was the only thing on my mind,” Carafice told me, in an email. “I didn’t have to push for things for songs to fit into this thematic mold… instead they just formed themselves as this big arching story line. This search for answers kind of took over my whole reality, including my songs.”
These losses made an indelible mark on Carafice, until creative obsession led to her heading back into her bedroom studio in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s clear that she was thoroughly immersed in the creation of Goners, which she composed, performed and engineered in April 2019. As I read about the experiences that led to the album’s concept, it all made sense that this was an album she had to make.
“I have always used music and songwriting as a way of processing difficult things in my own mind,” she told me. “As a person who has done a lot of study in mythology and storytelling, I am fully aware of the power of stories to structure and define our understanding of things that might not make sense otherwise. When I first met grief face to face was watching my beloved pet bird die in my hands. His death was visibly agonizing and painful and scared. After that experience I couldn’t accept the concept I had held before, that there was just nothingness after death. I needed with a deep need to find out what had happened to my bird after he passed away.”
While it may seem unusual for someone to lose five pets in a year, Carafice raises parakeets, two of whom were her first experiences of pet grief. Losing a pet rabbit, a parrot and a dog –all in the same twelve month period — was just coincidental bad luck. The lives and loss of these pets resonate throughout the album. Through Carafice’s beautifully poetic lyrics, Goners focuses on the denial, anger, sadness and acceptance that came as a result of losing her animal friends. In the tune “Rocket,” dedicated to the parakeet of the same name, she and some friends shoot off fireworks over a lake, as a sendoff to the beloved pet.
“We smashed bottles like warning signs/In a parade to the water’s edge /Where you will go away from me/And we will see how I’ll go on without you”
(From Rocket)
On this occasion, friends are nearby, and it’s a kind of celebration. Yet even by the end of the song, the artist wrestles with denial. “It’s not true,” she laments. “I really loved you.”
The heavy electronica sound of Goners, with buzzing pulses of bass, thick pads, occasional vocoder and programmed drums is all about experimental electronica that belongs right in the middle of the 2020s. Yet it’s a new direction for Carafice, whose first album, 2008’s Tells You To Fight, was recorded at Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago and, finds her, then a recent immigrant from New Zealand, displaying her powerful soprano voice over acoustic instruments, most notably guitar. She’s released two other albums since then, but none, not even 2014’s piano-centric Power Animals, are fully electronic in the way Goners is.
Carafice explains: “Yes I used to be a folk singer, lol. I think it’s very important for a musician to be able to evolve with the musical collective consciousness, to listen intently for sounds that have a deep resonance in this exact moment in history. I think that those who are really tuned into that consciousness these days are reaching back in music history to the early innovations in synth music. When dance music and meditation music were essentially the same thing. New Age. Why? Because those are the sounds that naturally formed when musical artists were contemplating ….outer space….consciousness….spirituality …..But still were super cool dudes with incredible style.” To make her point, Carafice included with her message vintage photos of Jean-Michel Jarre, Giorgio Moroder, and members of Tangerine Dream , each with their banks of vintage analog synthesizers.
Despite the crystal clarity of Goners, it’s Carafice’s first effort doing all the work, including engineering. It’s a deeply personal album that became a spiritual journey, in which Carafice expresses her faith that suffering can become joy, and because time is an illusion, we will see our lost loved ones again, though perhaps not until all existence comes to a glorious end.
“When the sky opens up/And your skull opens up/And your arms open up/And the sea opens up/And the galaxy collapses/Into glorious explosions/With you at the center/Don’t be afraid All my hope is in you”
[From Psychonaut (You At The Center)]
I asked Carafice who she has to thank for her musical training and vocal talents. From her vocal style, her exploration of spirituality, plus her unusual sense of humor, I am not surprised at her answer. “David Bowie. From age 4 I would sit in the dark with headphones on and listen to David Bowie. I was a really sick kid, and that was the only time I didn’t feel pain, listening to David Bowie in the dark. I have never had any vocal training, and took piano lessons for like a year when I was 10, so not really any musical training either. My heroes are the singers who don’t have trying-to-be-amazing singing voices.”
And yet, I find Carafice’s voice amazing, perhaps because it comes so naturally to her. Something I find even more fascinating, is that on her first effort at full blown electronica, Carafice came up with such a gorgeous and satisfying set of tracks using only a borrowed copy of Cubase 5 (Cubase just released v. 10), a MicroKorg, and a MIDI Keytar.
Goners was mixed by Ben King, and mastered by John Baldwin, and is available now on all streaming services. The rerelease of Carafice’s first masterpiece from 2008, Tells You To Fight, is also newly available.
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