The Singles Jukebox

The return of one of our Readers’ Week faves…

[Video][Website]
[5.71]

Megan Harrington: Morrison conjures the sonic equivalent of the nightmare where your body is running, pushing forward as hard and as fast as it can until you’re practically doubled over and falling to pieces — but you’re not moving anywhere. It’s affecting, but it’s the dark side of dreamy. The slight whistle on her vocal feels like running long fingernails through the grooves of my brain. 
[5]

Cassy Gress: This must have been recorded somehow through the Hubble. Carla is the lonely voice of a distant sun, keening over a people that abandoned her to the winds of space. Each soft “s” she breathes is a last thermal pulse of a dying star, expelling her essence into the void, until at last she is extinguished.
[10]

Will Adams: The opening ghost rhythms and atomized piano chords provide a wonderful base; unfortunately, “Vez Primera” doesn’t have a great grasp on the slow-build dynamic and carries on for five minutes of prettiness without much added.
[6]

Alfred Soto: A sad, slow crawl through the post-virginity blues. The synths evoke Disintegration-era Cure.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: This song has sent me down a praise & worship rabbit hole — it doesn’t take much — into those cavernous depths where feet may fail lugubrious, overly careful dirges and heavily treated guitars mean to sound like heaven or secret shames, sometimes both at once. I’m talking Hillsong’s “I Surrender” or Kari Jobe’s “Forever.” And Morrison’s lyrics aren’t too far off! Maybe she’d let me write a praise team parody and add a climax.
[3]

Brad Shoup: It’s the kind of track where you sings about heartbeats while a heart beats. Morrison maintains a tone-poem-like consistency, while Doppler’d strings and artificial woodwinds career past her.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: My problem with Carla Morrison is that her songs aim to be a sequence of poignant moments and, as a result, none of them are special and they finish up quite dull. In “Vez Primera”, the quiet verses build up inner reflections of a past love, then in the chorus her voice is as weak but there is a tedious element in the longing of the phrases. It aims to be dramatic but that truly doesn’t benefit the song.
[5]