“The title refers to the act of carving out a place for onesself in the world, the difficulty and frustration of that, the tediousness […] I didn’t know that it could be easier with a sharper knife.”
A little over a year after the dissonant, electric Waiting Room landed Kathryn Mohr accolades in the broader music press, the artist returns with their second full-length album Carve. As with the last album, place plays an important role in the new work: Instead of a disused fish factory in Iceland, this time Mohr found herself recording over several weeks in a mobile home in the Mojave Desert.
Her sound remains familiar, a ghostly kind of grunge unplugged that pairs minimal forceful riffs with Mohr’s pleading voice, often doubled or triple-stacked in the mix. There are deviations too, such as the fuzzy field recording of alien creatures and a bell on “Chromium 6” and the heavy distorted drone on “Crow Eyes.” It’s unsettling as ever, and an emotionally liberating listen.
