Listening to this new album by Carla Bozulich’s new beat combo Evangelista reminds me of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams film from a few year’s back .  Under the mental strain caused by two hours spent watching Sean Penn’s method boy gurning some unspeakable tragedy, everything has fractured; the narrative to what may well once have been a love story is now horribly deranged and disfigured.  I’d imagine if I had the fortitude to listen to this a thousand times I could piece it back together again.  Not sure I do though; this is tough going…yet, damn it, perversely enjoyable.

First, the confusing (for me) bit.   Carla Bozulich’s last album was called “Evangelista”.  People liked it (me, you, and the Wire mainly).  That is now the name of the band - maybe she thought it was lucky - into which she has been assimilated, and Hello, Voyager is the name of the album.    Alternatively, the band name has been consistent all the way, and “Carla Bozulich” was in fact the name of the last record.  In any event, there is clearly a strong lineage with that record in terms of the musicians used, and in the prevalent mood.   It is dark, passionate and turbulent, with its songs being drowned by more abstract noise and jazz elements.  

Imagine if Albert Ayler had faked his death, and had been living with fellow tramps in a dustbin strewn alley for the last four decades, imagine if him and his chums had been lured by the promise of free Buckfast (or whatever the US equivalent of that Scottish vagrant’s tipple of choice would be) into a jam session, and imagine that was with a just-jilted Patti Smith and her strung-out band.  It wouldn’t take a great leap into the mental Hudson to imagine “Hello, Voyager” as the result.  Maybe with the exception of the sublime string-sodden “For The L’il Dudes”, and “Lucky Lucky Luck” which sounds – bizarrely - like both ESG’s “You’re No Good” and, KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”.   

Just under a third of the album is taken up by the astonishing title track, which starts with Ayler’s junkyard band fighting with dogs, and ends with Bozulich on her knees, desperate: “there’s only only one word which hasn’t dried completely in your parched throat…the word is love.”  That last word, “love”,  hangs in the air like the word “death” does at the end of Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around”.  Over the course of this forty-five minute record, I may well have forgotten what the difference is between the two.

Listen to opening track “Winds of St Anne” at Carla’s place; buy Hello, Voyager from Constellation.  If you dare.