Geraldine Fibbers

Ethyl Meatplow were one of the late industrial music bands from Los Angeles, releasing Happy Days, Sweetheart (Dali, 1993) in the vein of Nine Inch Nails, adding to the model the B-52’s-style vocal harmonies of John Napier and Carla Bozulich. Queenie and Smokin' On The Devil's Johnson were the two cult singles of the era. While Napier formed the Buccinator, responsible for the bold The Great Painter Raphael (Basura, 1995) with the 15-minute cacophonic suite Discipline The Fireman, and then E.coli, who released the more conventional and even catchy To Drool (Triple X, 1996), and drummer Biff Sanders joined Polar Bear with Eric Avery, the singer (a former prostitute and drug addict, redeemed by Mahler’s symphonies and thus becoming a music critic) later joined the remnants of a hardcore band (the Glue) and founded the Geraldine Fibbers.

The Geraldine Fibbers’ debut album, Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home (Virgin, 1995), actually collected material previously released here and there: the single Marmalade (Virgin, 1995), a martial country track and one of their catchiest songs; the single Dragon Lady (Sympathy, 1994), perhaps their masterpiece, a track that begins in the style of the Cowboy Junkies and explodes into a grunge-noise tour de force.
From the EP Get Thee Gone (Sympathy, 1994) come the Celtic ballad Outside Of Town (paired there with Fancy) and the long, melancholy waltz of the title track.
Almost all the stories are horrific tales from the underbelly of Los Angeles. Daniel Keenan’s guitar digs deep wounds into the existential desolation screamed in Carla Bozulich’s masculine register. Jessy Greene (violin and viola) and William Tutton (double bass) make the atmosphere of tragedy even denser. Kevin Fitzgerald’s (ex-Further) drumming keeps a tempo that doesn’t exist, focusing on emphasizing the dramatic peaks.
Among the new compositions, Lilybelle stands out, a rural lament immersed in guitar clamor and storming drums; French Song, a long waltz stretched into gulfs of viola distortions à la John Cale; and House Is Falling, perhaps their happiest melody, and perhaps the most traditional track.
The Geraldine Fibbers quickly established themselves among the protagonists of the “neo-trad” genre led by bands like Uncle Tupelo. They had a more urban and intellectual culture, bringing them closer to noise-rock and progressive rock.

After an early Live From The Bottom Of The Hill, the EP What Part of Get Thee Gone Don’t You Understand? (Sympathy for the Record, 1996) was released.

Jazz guitarist Nels Cline took over the guitar for the following Butch (Virgin, 1997). The band mainly demonstrates an almost pop melodic talent. Not coincidentally, the album opens with the catchy California Tuffy, which combines a driving cowboy rhythm with a carefree Merseybeat-style chorus, and includes the power-pop of Trashman In Furs and the romantic ballad Swim Back to Me, surprisingly “easy” moments in the context of this album.
The record livens up when the band unleashes the visceral, atonal voodoobilly of Toybox, the wild quadrille with raga accents of Seven or In 10, the classical-psychodrama of Arrow To My Drunken Eye, and the frantic funk-rock of I Killed the Cuckoo, full of “no wave” experimentation (clownish-psychotic vocal harmonies, screeching riffs, epileptic rhythms). The influence of Can is felt (besides in a cover) in the complex composition of Dwarf Song and in the geometrically skewed instrumental Claudine. The long title track Butch is as ambitious (orchestral arrangement) as it is unresolved.
The band’s country soul comes fully to the fore in only two tracks, but they are exceptional: Folks Like Me, a genre masterpiece, an epic melody sung by Bozulich in her most heartfelt register, led at a martial pace, gloriously chased across hills and prairies by Greene’s violin and Cline’s lap steel; and Pet Angel, a waltz-paced choral litany with Greene’s viola imitating an accordion.
Bozulich (author of most of the material) closes the album with the surreal lullaby Heliotrope, which she whispers and whistles almost imperceptibly over the distorted, looped filigree of guitar and organ.
Perhaps no one else managed to fuse the archaic sounds of the Appalachians and “murder ballads” with the most subversive impulses of modern rock as effectively as they did.

Scarnella (Smells Like Records, 1998) is the duo of Carla Bozulich and Nels Cline, that contains much more abstract and adventurous jams.

Carla Bozulich's Red Headed Stranger (Dicristina Stair Builders, 2003) was her interpretation of Willie Nelson's country classic. The live I'm Gonna Stop Killing (DiChristina Stair Builders, 2004) added seven new songs.

But Bozulich's first real statement was Evangelista (Constellation, 2006), a terrifying vision of hell that harked back to Diamanda Galas. These are not songs but screams, whispers and moans that wonder through the inner maze of the psyche, through a soundscape of noises and samples and drones and loops and distortions.
The nine-minute Evangelista I (for violin, viola, cello, organ, contrabass and voice) opens with a melancholy sheet of collective drones and musique-concrete noises before Bozulich intones her shamanic howl. For a while the instruments careen along, indulging in their contrapuntal mess. Then the singer is left alone to exorcize her ghosts (Patti Smith-style) against wavering organ dissonances. Suddenly, the strings return to accompany the last two minutes of emotional maelstrom.
Bozulich was tempted by the drugged country lament of Steal Away, but found her true mission in the post-psychedelic chamber music of How To Survive Being Hit By Lightning for guitar, rain, percussion and humming, Baby That's The Creeps for vocals, organ and electronics, and Nel's Box for vocals, viola and samples. Each of these is a disorienting assembly of sounds and voices that only vaguely acknowledges the conventions of popular music. There is no rhythm to speak of, and the singing bears little relation to any known genre. Harmony is often drowned in a vision of free-form soundpainting, except that Bozulich keeps the "orchestra" to a minimum.
Both the voice and the music seem to have lost any ability to articulate meaning.
Members of Godspeed You Black Emperor and of their artistic commune provide the glacial accompaniment (notably multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily).

Evangelista then became the name of Carla Bozulich's all-female trio that debuted with the nine songs of Hello Voyager (Constellation, 2008), each completely different from the others. While it never achieves the transcendent creativity of Evangelista the album, Evangelista the band excels at the confessional dirge (Lucky Lucky Lucky, Winds Of Saint Anne), often with strings arranged by A Silver Mt Zion (the country ballad The Blue Room, the chamber instrumental For The L'il Dudes), and sometimes bluesy (Lucky Lucky Luck). Many threads come together in the twelve-minute Hello Voyager that begins as a percussive bacchanal with trumpet, but then comes alive with a Patti Smith-ian recitation coupled with mindbending guitar distortions The expressionist nightmare The Frozen Dress is the boldest moment. The raw industrial rock of Smooth Jazz and the punkish noise-rock of Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space unleash the energy that has been contained elsewhere.

Evangelista's second album Prince of Truth (Constellation, 2009) features a sort of supergroup (Dominic Cramp on keyboards, Nels Cline on guitar, Tara Barnes on bass, Ches Smith of Xiu Xiu on drums) and offered unsually regular and almost childish tunes such as Tremble Dragonfly and I Lay There in Front of Me Covered in Ice but also the dissonant chamber lied Iris Didn't Spell and the jazzy psychedelic lied Crack Teeth. The beastly energy of the singer is saved only for You Are Jaguar. The tortured expressionist kammerspiel The Slayer, drenched in guitar noise, was Bozulich's equivalent of the Doors' The End; and the nine-minute closer, On The Captain's Side, was a slow agony in a sparse electronic soundscape, a sort of personal catharsis.

Carla Bozulich's Boy (Constellation, 2014) marks another step backwards, towards a more conventional pop-soul chanteuse. This is particularly evident in the downtempo ballad Lazy Crossbones and in the cocktail-lounge blues Ain't No Grave, despite a spectral Nick Cave-style atmosphere and a general psychedelic disintegration. There are plenty of classy nuances, like the oddly romantic Brit-pop refrain of Danceland arising from a scarcely melodic lament. Gonna Stop Killing is a dejected elegy a` la Tom Waits with a great harp carillon. Her declamation acquires a metaphysical dimension within the gloomy hypnotic emptiness of Drowned To The Light. The only major experiment is One Hard Man, propelled by industrial pow-wow rhythm and sabotaged by electronic noise.