In a male-dominated music scene of DC (don’t even try to deny it) Carol Bui, shines like a beacon of post-punk feminine rock. She is having a party tonight (Monday) at the Cat to celebrate her new album Everyone Wore White. (released on 54o40′ or Fight!)
The record, is officially out tomorrow, but today you get to hear it here, and nowhere else, with leading lady notes, no less

BYT Listening Party as done by Carol Herself

This album contains some of the most intensely personal material I will ever share with anyone, to the point where the lyrics were very difficult to sing in the studio…but I am so very proud of it. Making it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever been through and I do want to share it all with anyone and everyone that’ll listen.

1
I wrote this song as a treat to myself. It’s busy, self-indulgent…and TJ and Martin totally accomodated me here. This was actually the first half of a longer song, the second half being track #7 on the album. We tracked them as two separate songs and were going to edit them together during mastering, but in the end I decided they sounded great by themselves.

Modern Dance
I brought this song to TJ and Martin and said I wanted it to feel “majestic”, without offering a more granular explanation. They didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, but the end result was exactly what I had in mind…only better. Daniel’s violin took it to the next level. This is definitely one of my favorites.

eol
TJ, Martin and I played around with this and took it from a bright, jangly pop song to a dramatic, almost waltz. It was TJ’s idea to expand on it rhythmically, taking it almost half time to bring out the guitar and vocal melodies. Jenny and Daniel added beautiful strings and turned it into high, unapologetic melodrama…then the song grew up.

By the way, ‘eol’ stands for ‘End-Of-Line’ as well as ‘End-of-Life’.

Quan Am
Oddly enough, I’ve gotten a lot of Radiohead comparisons on this song. I can kind of hear it, but am afraid to say so because their fans might get bent out of shape over the blasphemous nature of that comparison. This is my absolute favorite arrangement with Marc and Ian. I secretly hacked the rhythm and guitar parts from Blonde Redhead’s “In Particular” and PJ Harvey’s “Hook”, but then with their help, it turned into something more stylish and clever…more pop. To give it a ‘cinematic’ feel, Chad added some fake farfisa and sound treatments…and to retain the bad-assness of the track, we added an unsettling guitar noise solo between a couple verses and what TJ called a “banshee guitar” line at the end. The pick up to that might be my favorite moment in the song, at the song’s climax. But I love it all.

Call From Bangkok
I started listening to a lot of Shellac and Kate Bush when I wrote this, but most people probably wouldn’t be able to tell. This is another one of my favorite tracks (I have many on this album). This song could have been super cheesy and dancey because of the rhythmic motive (is that the right term?), but thankfully TJ and Martin are a lot smarter than that.

The Year After
Marc, Ian and I played this song for a long time before tracking it at Inner Ear, but what we actually committed to tape is drastically different from the previous arrangement. It used to be slower, busier, with a more fluttery rhythm section during the verses, but we worked with TJ a lot to scale it down into pure, biting and emotive rock, which projected the theme of the lyrics perfectly. The song ended up in its most sincere and succinct form. Another favorite.

2
As I mentioned in my comments on the opening track, this was supposed to be its continuation, kind of the calm after the storm if you will.

Hypnagogia
I was listening to a lot of Denali when I wrote this. TJ asked me to come up with a guitar solo for the bridge to give the song some balls, which I reluctantly did. I thought it was cocky and cheesy at first, but grew to love it.

Rockville
If I had to pick one favorite from this album, it would be Rockville. This was the first arrangement that TJ and Martin actively collaborated with me on. The drum beat fucking kills, I love it so much. Both the bass and drums were written to accentuate the rhythm on the guitar. Daniel gave it his Midas touch on the violin to make the song cry AND stab. That’s how I see it all anyway. I got the album title from a lyric in the last verse.

St. Elizabeth’s
Probably the most straightforward rock song on this album. We took out the bass line because it sounded too Devo.

Qua Cau Gio Bay
I loved the vocal melody so much, I wanted to sing it on my album with nothing else…to keep it organic. It’s been done over many times by a lot of Vietnamese singers, but in a light and buoyant pop arrangement. My mother said that I sound very American in this recording. I felt really embarassed when she told me that but then thought “well, fuck…I AM an American.” Duh.

all photos: http://www.shervinfoto.com/

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