by David Wilikofsky
When caroline announced their signing to the legendary Rough Trace Records in 2020, they were shrouded in mystery. The group initially formed in 2017 as trio, slowly adding members over the intervening years and transforming from what was purportedly a conventional guitar band into something entirely different. At the time, scant evidence of their music existed on the internet, but their debut single (released to coincide with their signing) showcased their sound: an amalgam of folk music, classical composition and ambient atmosphere, captured in a video of the band performing the song in an abandoned pool. One more single followed, but there were still more questions about the group than answers. Their debut album helps to resolve the most pressing ones; caroline are the real deal, and the album is a showcase for what makes them so special.
The formula for most caroline songs is quite simple on paper. First they lay down a backbone, usually a simple musical phrase or riff that can and will be repeated ad infinitum. Then start building atop it; add strings swooping in and out between notes, free drum solos, spindly guitar riffs straight off a Bill Orcutt record, incidental noise. Some tracks like “Dark Blue” and “Skydiving Onto The Library Roof” turn into improvised flights of fancy, spinning off in countless directions. Others are more straightforward like “IWR”, a folk-inspired ballad that builds to a sweeping climax of interlocking strings. Elsewhere they strip things down to halting drum and bass lines or lock into off-kilter grooves reminiscent of Still House Plants. There is a lot of territory covered, but the possibilities still feel nearly endless.
Many of caroline’s members are intertwined with the London post-punk scene, and there’s some temptation to compare them to their peers; caroline’s size (eight members) and instrumentation (which includes woodwinds and strings) bears similarity to Black Country, New Road, and their interest in building expansive, slowly developing compositions is shared by that band and other contemporaries like Deathcrash. But where those groups are all about control and precision, caroline’s compositions blur around the edges. Their foundation in improvisation shines through; their music feels more extemporaneous than anything I’ve heard coming out of the scene, giving each member the latitude to simply exist in the moment. They’re less a singular, monumental force than a group of individuals in dialog with one another, building music that feels alternately epic and intimate together.
More than anything, the experience of listening to the album often felt akin to walking through a gallery. At times the music feels so expansive it threatens to swallow you whole, encircling you like a Rothko painting or Serra sculpture; at others it’s barely there, flecks of sound thrown onto a vast canvas of silence. Flurries of pizzicato become freeform brush strokes and sighed, distant vocals washes of color. Sounds are shaped and sculpted with attention to positive and negative space, employing silence to imbue each note with even more power. No matter your mileage with this style of music, one thing is eminently clear: caroline are artists, and what they’ve created is a work of art.