caroline Review
“The timings were so impeccable that it is hard to believe they could achieve such enigmatic synchronicity without watching each other’s movements.”
By Sadie Rycraft
Intricate time sequences, extremely tight rhythms and atmospheric energy makes up the 8 piece band, caroline, from London. Bringing together shared experiences of playing genres such as midwestern ‘emo’ guitar music, Appalachian folk, minimalist classical and various forms of dance music, it is clear that the influences shaping carolines own unique sound is hugely eclectic. The result is a remarkably polished post-rock-meets-ambient-folk sound exclusive to the octet, with a richly textured soundscape.
Bringing their largely instrumental music to The Baths on a particularly dark and rainy March evening, their originality didn’t stop at merely the melodies that filled the mid-sized central venue. Their set-up was distinctive, playing ‘in the round’; all facing each other in a circle, with the audience observing around them. On the same level, and so close you could reach out and touch them, this way of playing was so incredibly intimate and felt exceptionally special. The complexity of their musical arrangement may have been why their physical arrangement was slightly obscure - the timings were so impeccable that it’s hard to believe they could achieve such enigmatic synchronicity without watching each other's movements.
Performing songs from their much-lauded self-titled album, with a watchful audience on the outskirts of their circle, some moments were so still and delicate that you could almost hear every inhale of breath in the room. Their sound is difficult to describe, but it feels like the sun is shining and the rain is pouring all at the same time, as beautiful as it is unsettling. Ambient-folk meets an arthouse film score. ‘Engine (eavesdropping)’ begins as a gentle and tame instrumental, touching the song's only two lyrics a third in “eavesdropping through images but how can I tell? Everything lasts longer” in an ambient and reverberating manner, transcending into a cacophony of strings, looped guitar and disjointed drums.
The close of ‘Skydiving onto the library roof’ is like a staring contest of the music world, with guitarists and violinists egging each other on via nodding cues to leave bigger gaps between their strident downstrokes. ‘Dark blue’, the opening track of the album, lures the listener into a state of meditation with 6 and a half minutes of a repeated guitar melody and frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand, but charming nonetheless, and evoking more than lyrics alone ever could. The only lyric throughout that’s unobtrusively sung over the rhythmic undercurrents is “I want it all, so I tell them, I want it all”. Caroline has previously referred to their music as “sad boy triumphalism” in an interview; the juxtaposition between lyrics and melody that runs throughout the whole album is consistent with this phrase coined by Llewellyn.
“Can I be happy in this world?” is the stentorian vibrato that cuts through the soaring, romantic soundscape of ‘Good morning (red)’, encouraging pensive contemplation and stillness. This track feels like an affectionate exhibition of wild impulse, tethered by great control.
After 45 minutes of caroline’s exploration of sound manipulation and a bewitched audience holding their breath, we were asked to follow them up the staircase and into the upstairs of The Baths, with a high vaulted ceiling, glass skylights and incredible acoustics. Audience members carried their cans of beer, due to a Bring Your Own Booze situation, up into the vast space. The band explain that, while practising before the gig, they played a song ‘IWR’ from the album that they wouldn’t usually perform live and were completely mesmerised by how the sounds blended and echoed in this space. Once a public bath, and then more famously a music venue in which the likes of Led Zeppelin and Cream have played at, The Baths has also been used as a social club and a gym before returning to a music venue for Sound City Ipswich and being used for ‘The Smokehouse Presents’ gigs.
‘IWR’ consists of fluttering strings, timid guitar rhythms and the band vocalising in unison the same simple refrain ‘Somehow I was right all along’ but with a melodic complexity that severs the emotive impact from any literal meaning. I feel confident in speaking on behalf of all attendees that this moment was the sort of live music experience that stays vivid and beloved in your memory. Closing with the lyric ‘do you wake up with an old set of handlebars between your fingers?” felt like a fitting way for caroline’s set to conclude. Their unconventional, unorthodox dynamic and what some would describe as ‘melodic weirdness’ is exactly why their self-titled album has been so well received and has made them memorable. Offbeat synergy, fragments of varying genres and on the whole, music somewhere between angelically delicate and wildly emotive is the sound caroline have developed all for themselves.