Carissa’s Weird: Songs About Leaving (2002)-Ethan Smith
Carissa’s Weird: Songs About Leaving (2002)
By Ethan Smith
Carissa’s Wierd (weird was intentionally misspelled) was formed by songwriters Mat Brooke and Jean Ghetto. They were influenced by bands like Joy Division and the Smiths but sounded nothing like them; however they held the same mood. Their sound was unlike any other band. Melancholic soft indie rock with gentle strings and sad keys coupled with somber male/female vocals often dueting and singing lyrics that were always as honest as they were painful. By the time they’d release Songs About Leaving they’d fully come into their sound and proven to be as creative as they were unique but beautiful things never seem to last. In 2003, a year after the release of Songs About Leaving, they’d announced their break up and went their separate ways to form such acts as Band of Horses, Grand Archives, S, Crictor and Sera Cahoone.
When I first heard this album about a year ago I was shocked by how real and how well they seemed to express pain. It sounds cliché when you read about it but when you listen to it you get just hit by the way it traverses so many emotions. Jean’s very sad voice, almost on the verge of tears reciting “My dreams full of what’s not real / I’ll fly away and save the world / I’ll make you proud someday / I just won’t be around to see your face” is breathtaking, the way Mat and Jean deliver these verses causes them to take on a whole new level of sorrow. Even if the music was instrumental it would still be very effective and impressively emotive; the haunting and echoing guitars along with the very somber pianos and violins. Songs About Leaving shows to not only be an album with a unique sound, but a beautiful album to serve as a soundtrack for the broken hearted.
Copyright C 2007 Ethan Smith