Based in New Orleans, songwriter and musician Carver Baronda draws on a number of genres, her distinctive sound mixing pop and garage rock with what she describes as “the lonesome, eerie side of American roots music.” Set for release next month, her debut EP Spooky Love makes good on this description, the wistful country atmosphere coloured with both sadness and strangeness, mining the traditional American style for its rich seams of mystery and heartbreak.
The haunted shuffle of opening track ‘If Nothing Else Comes Along’ lives up to the EP’s title, lap steel providing a nostalgic air and the track’s steady skip steeped in sadness. Baronda’s vocals are certain yet slightly removed, emerging from within the track, as though the whole thing is being playing over speakers from another age entirely.
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With Baronda’s strong, ominous writing and delivery, ‘Devotion’ comes from a similar stable to Claire Cronin‘s Big Dread Moon, though where Cronin borrows from the stark gothic branch of traditional folk, Carver Baronda is more indebted to country rock. There’s a warmer, wistful air here, though this does not restrict the unsettling tone, a pervasive sense of weirdness shot through the track that lifts it into a Southern Gothic territory.
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Spooky Love will be released on the 18th October and you can pre-order it from the Carver Baronda Bandcamp page.