With the supersonic alt-country prog-rock band the Geraldine Fibbers on (permanent?) hiatus, husky-voiced singer-guitarist Carla Bozulich and six-string torturer Nels Cline have resurfaced as Scarnella. Bashed out in a week's time in the summer of 1998, Scarnella picks up where the most extreme of Fibbers material leaves off -- as an experiment in narcotic din a la Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground before them. It's a potentially room-clearing effort, ranging from the strung-out "Release the Spring" to several superaggressive swaths that may be the aural equivalent of flesh being pulled slowly and methodically from the bone. Some more-structured moments -- the torchy "The Most Useless Thing" and the giddy noise-pop workout "Dandelion" -- do recall the Fibbers, but ultimately Scarnella is for those fans whose limits must be challenged even further. --Neal Weiss
Track Listing:
1. underdog2. release the spring
3. improvisation #4
4. the most useless thing
5. dandelions
6. improvisation #3 (safari youth)
7. snowy (about a cat)
8. death by northwest
9. improvisation #1 (the bag of hair)
10. a millennium fever ballad