ROUNDING THE EDGES
BY LEN SOUSA
An interview with singer-songwriter Carina Round
“I don't want to even get into the it's hard being a woman in this industry spiel,” says alt rock pixie Carina Round when asked about pop princesses having such a commanding role in the music industry. “It would be rather easy for me to go on a rant here but there's really no use. There’s some fucking amazing music out there. It’s up to people to find it and buy it. Don't get me wrong, I love some pop music, but there’s no balance anymore. I think it has got better lately though, musicians seem to be giving majors the bird and relying on their own legwork a little more.”
This sober view on the music scene is not so surprising when the 27 year-old singer-songwriter explains what it was like growing up in the industrial town of Wolverhampton in the UK’s West Midlands. “We lived in a very run down area so I had quite an isolated upbringing,” she says. “I was an only child and my mother was too afraid to let me out of the house so I spent most of my time with my imaginary friends and a record player. I also had a cassette machine that I could record my voice over songs that were playing on the radio…I moved to Birmingham as soon as it was possible for me to escape. It was like an anthill of musicians and artists.”
Round developed her sound in Birmingham but eventually ventured into London and likens the city to a mini Los Angeles—“a place where people in the UK go to ‘make it’ [only] with far better public transportation.” She describes the music community there as a bit of a fish bowl but admits she’s generalizing. “[London] is a fantastic place to visit. England is pregnant with talent wherever you are. There’s always been really good stuff coming out of there.”
While in London, she was able to self-finance her second album, The Disconnection, with the help of a record company advance in 2004. Now ready to release her third album, Slow Motion Addict, on Interscope Records, the singer finds herself living Stateside. “I just moved to L.A. six moths ago,” Round reveals. “I like to shed my skin every few years. When I first arrived I hated it, but the city seems to have opened its arms to me a little.”
Round’s world seems filled with tiny personifications for everything. Her Los Angeles has a pair of welcoming arms while her version of London is a pregnant woman. Even her move to America appears driven by unnatural forces. “Before I moved out here, I felt there where invisible hands holding on to my ankles,” she says. Though not trying to be obscure, Round never explains just where the hands she mentions are attached—whether to her music career or something more tangible—and she shares her thoughts on her new album as a series of broken images that almost sound like readings from a lyric sheet.
“The world [was] whizzing by like a surreal animation. The light was changing around me, but I felt like I was rotting—like the dream where you're running but not moving. There’s a certain comfort in not reaching for your dreams for fear of failure and I felt that all around me. And my own fear, too. That kind of feeling can lead you into some nasty things. Real dark shit. Self-destruction and excess. And it becomes a vicious circle.” Unexpectedly she adds, “I wanted to put that into something that was listenable. One of the few things that makes me feel good at times like that is dancing, so I wanted it to be danceable to as well.”
Self-destruction and excess don’t often equate with danceability, but here is where Round exemplifies the complex combination of emotions that drive her records. Where some songs sound like they derive from a typical yearning for empowerment, there’s another layer to them—a more general sense of independence and an attempt to break from any conventional molds some might try to cast her in. After talking to Round, it’s clear she’s not trying to speak for her gender or for any other hokey sentiments. She’s interested in simply making good music. And like her idol Patti Smith before her, she succeeds in dismantling the concept of molds by abruptly reinventing herself from song to song.
Originally Published:
Skope Magazine (Mar/Apr 2007)
