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Don't Get Comfy / Nowhere

by Carmen Quill

supported by
Alex Nystrom
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Alex Nystrom Medicine for grief. thank you Favorite track: Brain.
Lars Gotrich
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Lars Gotrich There are moments on this quiet EP that belie its gentle nature. Carmen Q. Rothwell sings with a hushed hesitation, as if choosing the next syllable carefully, over room noise and her plucked/bowed upright bass… but there’s a universe between a sigh, uncertainty in a deep breath. www.vikingschoice.org/archive/vikings-choice-guide-to-bandcamp-friday-aug-2021/ Favorite track: Nowhere.
Corie
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Corie The honest lyrics, Carmen’s beautiful voice and the unpredictable timing of it all gives me chills and sometimes tears. Thank you for sharing this beautiful album with the world ♥️ Favorite track: Nowhere.
Benedict Kupstas
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Benedict Kupstas These songs burrow deep into your heart and while they do their wrenching thing, they also do a swelling thing. Your heart will be a bit bruised but better for it. These arrangements are stark and stunning. The space around Carmen's singing and playing feels somehow both intimate and infinite.
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1.
2.
3.
Brain 03:40
4.
Poor Boy 01:55
5.
Nowhere 05:36
6.
Will I Find 04:10
Will I find a way to say "I love you, too"? If I don't, will I regret it? Will there be another chance to let you know of all the good things I had forgotten? Is there honesty in favors if there's nothing there backing up the words that come out of the mouth you hear? With the ups and downs of days it's been hard to feel as though anything I'm saying is really real. Is there something I can do, where I'm really me, in this moment when the "me" I know is hard to see? Will I let go of my pride so that you can hear some small words I haven't been able to say in years? Running through my memories is a weighted task: there's a question within every one I'll never ask. If there's one thing that I know, it's that you tried, and that's all that I could ask of you

about

Carmen Quill (formerly Carmen Q. Rothwell) describes the songs on her debut full-length Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere as “songs she wrote because she needed them.” This is an important clarification for her: they were not born out of any explicit desire to write music. The singer and accomplished jazz bassist’s pithy, emotionally stark lyrics sketch the major life events which inspired them clearly. Side A revolves around a stalemate in an under-defined romantic entanglement while Side B was composed in the lead-up to and aftermath of the death of her father after a long battle with cancer. Writing and performing this music in the midst of those struggles had a therapeutic utility for Quill, and seemed to correspond with change occurring beyond herself—that is, the relationship clarifying itself and, ultimately, her father’s passing.

Despite their vast differences in emotional charge and significance for Quill, the similarities between the two sides are at least as compelling as their differences. They consist of only three musical elements: Quill’s disarming, crystal-clear soprano, her restless bass figures, and incidental background noise that becomes part of the counterpoint. Usually, the songs emerge from a recurring germ of a thought—a line from an email, a snippet from an inner monologue on the subway, so on—ricocheting endlessly around Quill’s preoccupied mind (“How do I get my brain to do what I want it to?” she asks ad infinitum in “Brain,”) These compositions are deliberately constructed, but are animated by the sense that Quill is making her musical choices almost in real time, with her words—full of empathy and self-awareness—directly tied to and influencing the form.

The songs on Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere conjure a panoply of musical reference points, but every listener will identify them differently. Sometimes Quill’s lithe, pitch-perfect delivery evokes lyrical jazz singers like Blossom Dearie; elsewhere, her cascading vocal chorales recall 16th-century madrigals and early opera. Other listeners will hone in on her sharp and plaintive vocal lines, which find resonances with the work of Björk, Joanna Newsom, and Meredith Monk.

But while Quill’s musical approach may bring up various associations, she had no models in mind. These songs never border on referentiality or pastiche. The musical language of Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere is intuitive and fully subjective, and will be immediately comprehensible to any receptive listener who has ever felt the walls of their mind starting to close in on them, chained to the weight of a moment.

-Winston Cook-Wilson

credits

released August 6, 2021

All songs composed and performed by Carmen Quill
Side A (tracks 1-3) were recorded by Carmen Quill in 2017 and mixed by Zubin Hensler in 2020.
Side B (tracks 4-6) and bonus track were recorded and mixed by Nico Hedley, 2020-2021.
Mastered by Ryan Weiner
Produced by Carmen Quill
Design and layout by Benedict Kupstas
Artist photo by Haley Freedlund

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Carmen Quill Brooklyn, New York

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