Carla dal Forno

Carla dal Forno is part of a great alternative pop tradition: No matter how menacing or mopey the scenes of which she’s singing in her wonderfully sighing monotone are, the music around her is deceptively cheery, drum machines springing and synthesizers gliding as if stair-stepping their way toward the sun. dal Forno grew up in Australia, learning to read music by playing cello and soon becoming enamored with the rock scene around her in Melbourne. She joined several promising bands before splitting for Berlin a dozen years ago; she moved a half-dozen times during a two-year stint in the city, the shifting setting inspiring her striking debut, You Know What It’s Like, issued on Blackest Ever Black in 2016. Pitchfork noted that dal Forno “occupies the sumptuous gloom of her songs like a ghost,” evoking comparisons to Grouper and Moondog. She moved to London, launched an NTS radio show, worked in Blackest Ever Black’s record store, and made two more records that steadily refined and brightened her approach.

Several years ago, dal Forno returned to Australia with her partner, becoming parents and settling in a small town nearly two hours north of Melbourne. Living in a little community rather than a sprawling city, dal Forno found herself repeatedly encountering the same people, her acquaintanceships and friendships intensified by proximity. She began funneling those encounters into new songs that documented ideas about what it felt like for those interactions to tip into unhealthy obsession, to be devoted to and disappointed by a relative stranger. The result, Confession, plays out like a slow-burn psychological thriller, less jump scares and more smiles a little bit too bright, eyes a little too wide. Her voice largely unguarded by effects, dal Forno lets us walk into dark corners of her mind that don’t necessarily make her proud, then turns on the lights with perfect bits of disconcerting pop.