SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: CARLA DAL FORNO – COME AROUND

Carla dal Forno
Come Around
Kallista Records

Carla dal Forno’s Come Around gives off a storybook feeling, as though you’ve opened a leather bound, gently discoloured by time, fairy tale novel.

Instead of images, her whimsical ‘storytelling’ is enhanced by sounds like wind chimes in “Deep Sleep” and rippling gusts of wind in “Stay Awake”—each one methodically placed.

There’s undeniable unity and belonging between the melodies and Carla dal Forno’s vocals, but she maintains control of the music, and seems to be above it at all times, her words coming from somewhere further away.

The songs explore a search—the kind that seems to be constant. Lines like “Stay awake all the time make no room for sleep/Find it hard to relate to the months or weeks”, and “When you’ve traveled so far that you’re home at last” feel reminiscent of walking in circles, coming back to yourself again and again.

Carla dal Forno briefly deviates from the haunting lyricism and embraces a lullaby-like melancholy with a line from “Slumber”: “My love there’s still so much to do, and so much I still want to be but I’ve grown up/To find the choices I have made have let me fall behind somehow but you say slumber in my arms”. It’s unexplored territory—to not have to come up with reasons to be held.

There’s a sense that something is left unsaid within every song, and yet the line “Ask me again it’s in the air if you’re listening” suggests that retracing our steps and listening closer can be satisfyingly illuminating.

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