Editor's note: “Audible Granola” is a biweekly column dedicated to the celebration of quintessential albums from Seattle and the PNW.
I first discovered Carissa’s Wierd during a 1 a.m. Spotify stalking session, where all the best music is found.
For someone as nosy as me, the “Friend Activity”rabbit hole is the app’s most dangerous feature, but it’s as informative as it is intrusive. I learned that my friend’s sibling’s friend’s stepmom has unmatched music taste and, due to her playlist’s heavy reliance on Carissa’s Wierd’s 2002 album “Songs About Leaving,”she must have a lot to unpack.
Originally reigning from Tucson, Arizona,Mat Brooke and Jenn Champion of Carissa’s Wierd moved their musical aspirations to Seattle, integrating with the city’s indie rock scene of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.The duo’s emo leanings mixed with the sprawling minimalism of slowcore,a genre defined by its meditative tempos and dejection for the world, eventually adding more band members until the string of sorrowful vignettes known as “Songs About Leaving” came to fruition.
Carissa’s Wierd is set apart by the damp cataclysmic atmospheres they cobble together one layer at a time. Every track on “Songs for Leaving” is all-consuming from the first dismal piano key, shaky guitar chord, and musty bow of a violin. It’s the musical encapsulation of the nastiest streams of consciousness seeping through the textures of the human brain — horribly intrusive but strangely satisfying.
Breaking down the layers of the song “Silently Leaving the Room”helps lay out how instantaneous depression can be. The piano radiates a cult-like, Ethel Cain-codedawakening, like a switch flipped from pleasantly neutral to imminent death everywhere. My friend’s grandma recently told me about her spiritual awakening in college where she momentarily lost her sight, hearing, and awareness of her surroundings while the pains of humanity’s sins, in her eyes, drew her closer to death. And that’s this song in a nutshell.
Brook and Champion shine in their freedom to share the truth and nothing but the truth with jagged lyrics making up nearly every verse, chorus, and song title. While confessional songwriting had been chewing listeners up and spitting them out since the ‘70s,Carissa’s Wierd did it with newfound brutality and little will to live. These lyrics read less like poetry and more like intrusive observations of a world quickly collapsing in on itself.
Take “Farewell to All These Rotten Teeth,”whose borderline disgusting repetition of “Leave the skin and bones to dry” punctuates the prettiest guitar, piano, and string passages I’ve ever heard. Neither element is absent of pain, but both sound beautiful in their own right.
As the album’s title suggests, “Songs About Leaving” trudges through the struggles of saying goodbye from many different angles. Sometimes the band is leaving a destructive relationship on “Ignorant Piece of Shit,” or departing all semblance of reality on “You Should Be Hated Here.”In all aspects of the concept, Brook and Champion worm through the conflicting feelings of leaving things behind with the misery only someone who lived through a Seattle winter could fathom.
Carissa’s Wierd is a reminder of life’s singularity. All we do is exist while our world molds and pressures us to leave people, leave mental spaces, and sometimes leave our own happiness. While it's objectively horrible, there is something peaceful about the lack of choice, and letting the leaving overtake you without trying too hard to stop it.
That being said, someone please check in with my friend’s sibling’s friend’s stepmom as soon as possible.
Reach columnist Mead Gill at arts@dailyuw.com. X: @mead_fr4ncis.
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(1) comment
DUDE i got jumpscared by this i love carissas wierd i was listening to lazy eyelids on repeat earlier today. You must check out ugly but honest it's their best. Awesome article daily needs more stuff like this
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