I don’t know which is the more remarkable: that Carissa’s Wierd, long dormant, is playing new shows or is releasing new material. Damnably, I missed the two New York shows, but I have the two new songs, and they’re stunning. “Tucson” begins with the repeated line, “You’ve been gone so long; you can ne’er go home again.” The band doesn’t try: the new songs pick up where they might have been if they’d been active for the past decade. In a sense, they have: most of the band’s members have been pursuing other projects. And they’ve been collaborating, in a sense: Sera Cahoone’s solo albums and Mat Brooke’s work with Grand Archives featured guest support from other members. The reassembled Carissa’s Wierd is older and deeper, sadder but less angry, and if anything, even more impossibly gorgeous.
Download this now, and put your headphones on.