VISUAL ART:

MUSIC:

Pentimento, 2025

All of the songs of Pentimento began as poems against the backdrop of global crisis, national borders, civil unrest, birth, death, bad love, new love, true love. They were written in the desert during spring and summer. There, history and time are visual in the drama of great boulders, in layers on a rockface—the potential and past energy of the ancient sea-floor. Some of these lyrics were written on postcards and in letters. Others began as embellishments on watercolor paintings, or captions for a photograph in a diary, or were written as responses in the margins of a journal to a child, newborn, from a generation past. These “artifacts” from writing/living informed what would eventually become material for this record.

 Later, beside the ocean, and during the first snow of the season, a special group of musicians gathered to bring the album to life. While half of the songs were built into place according to a rigorous “plan,” the other half came together for the first time on this very occasion and were learned and performed live on the spot. Over six days, all of it was captured on an 8-track cassette tape recorder, including fortuitous feedback bass drone, and spontaneous laughter.

—Carson McHone

***

The first notes of Pentimento are birdsong, and with it in the distance, Carson McHone reads from an 1840 letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller: “Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.” One of the birds whistles a distinct three-note tune. McHone whistles it back. A piano takes up the line, and the song “Winter Breaking” blooms into being.

In the study of physical art, the pentimento is an artifact, a remnant of a previous draft or altogether different painting that’s apparent beneath layers of paint on a finished canvas. Within seconds of Pentimento, one hears how the album organizes itself around this idea: “Winter Breaking” is an astonishing piece of songwriting, a meticulously crafted guitar-pop jewel that finds McHone at the peak of her powers as a bandleader and a lyricist. The first 30 seconds contain the pentimenti, the earlier sounds, spaces, and materials that became this sound.

The effect is staggering; even for McHone, whose output to this point has seen her channel seemingly disparate influences into a unique, alluring sonic signature, Pentimento marks a radical expansion of the scale of her ambitions. The “all of it” present here is not just the album, but context. The 185 years between McHone and Emerson. Two seasons in the desert. Six days spent oceanside with friends. The eternity between us and the first notes of birdsong. 

Thrillingly alive in the music are exquisite articulations of pastoral folk with snatches of spoken word or a choice instrument that casts a song in elegiac light. Occasional riffs that call back to her roots in Texas build towards moments of organic and tactile rock, with tambourines and claps, homemade instruments, and layered acoustics. The record is an anchor in the ceaseless flow of time, a home amidst the tumult of the moment we find ourselves in now—love and beauty in the presence of brutality. 

Pentimento is an audacious and rewarding record. It is also a reckoning: How can love and beauty exist in the presence of brutality? Disquietingly. Dissonantly. Against its shadow and bearing its mark. This is what McHone and her collaborators capture on Pentimento with the subtlety of watercolor painting and the richness of verse, in ghost vocals and child voices alike. Every layer is a universe unto itself, revealing the pulse that animates Carson McHone’s creative drive. Arranged here and expressed as a whole, it constitutes a masterpiece.

MRG 872

Still Life, 2022

Praise for Still Life:

“In a stroke of prescient songwriting, McHone explores themes of attachment and longing,

uncertainty and loss.... In that way, Still Life rises to meet this current moment.”  —Austin Chronicle

“The songs on Still Life probe the permeable boundaries between desolation and exhilaration,

isolation and community, failure and hope, loss and love” —No Depression

“Still Life exists on a higher plane…one of the best albums you will hear this year.” —Glide Magazine

Inside a still life, but still alive...

There is something almost excruciating about the places in between. The feeling of falling, a reassertion of gravity as one step leads to another, but just before the foot lands. The purgatory between borders, before clarity becomes whole.

Still Life, Carson McHone’s third album and first release with Merge Records, quivers like a tightrope, with songs about existing within such tension and surviving beyond the breaking point. These are stories of sabotage, confusion, and surrender. The album is a testament to the effort of reaching, sometimes flailing, for understanding and for balance. Still Life invites us to gasp at our own reflection, while acknowledging the unsettling beauty in this breath. 

McHone’s 2018 internationally released Carousel (LOOSE MUSIC / NINE MILE RECORDS), produced by Mike McCarthy in Nashville, was a reimagining of songs from her formative years coming of age playing in Texas bars. It established her as a shrewd artist who raises unconventional questions with language equally at home in a short story or a poem.  Still Life addresses a broader picture. It is thematically more refined and yet more daring. McHone’s voice remains front and center, but it’s richer, darker. Wielded more than woven. A gorgeously wrought instrument for pushing meaning forward.

McHone wrote the songs of Still Life in quiet moments between tours in her hometown of Austin, then recorded in Ontario with Canadian musician and producer, Daniel Romano. “Daniel is a perceptive player and his response was intuitive and organic,” McHone says of the session, “Shadows sharpened and came to life as full vignettes that felt familiar in a magical way, a product of keeping things emotionally open. I think we picked up on things that were unwritten.” Together in a home studio they cut almost the entire record themselves, calling on two friends, the versatile Mark Lalama on accordion, piano, and organ, and David Nardi with some savvy saxophone to round it out. The phrasing and tones recall the late 60’s and early 70’s, another era of transition and innovation (think John Cale, The Kinks, Richard and Linda Thompson). 

This first time collaboration brings a compelling dynamic. The musical punctuation is intricate, erratic, and at times even playful. The arrangements provide texture to the landscape of the songs while sustaining the underlying thematic tension. The album opens with “Hawks Don’t Share” a literary allusion to the creative sabotage that often confronts artistic alliance.  A pair of sparring electric guitars sets the scene, mirrored in the line, We’re both boxers babe/ we don’t make love.  Bright horns pop between phrases overtop a tight rhythm section. A jangly twelve string leads us into a driving chorus with big vocal harmonies and layered synth. The title track plays out an anguished spiraling. Right at the point where language fails, the vocals break away into fuzz guitar and violent, incessant piano, as if the turmoil can only be expressed by music. In “Sweet Magnolia” the strings, horns, and piano create a perfect orbit for the mannered intensity of a song that soars but is essentially spoken. "End of the World" builds with dark and dissonant violins over a repetitive major guitar progression leaving us hanging on its final line, tell me what do you know of restraint?  The punchy sax and tumbling toms of “Only Lovers” play into the ruse of pretending you haven’t already fallen when you have. The background vocals are like a playground taunt.  “Someone Else” cuts right to the punch. I’m caught between the two/ sweet despair and hope renewed/ say it ain’t profound babe. The lyrics are wry and the vocals perfectly nail the attitude.  The rolicking organ and the hammering piano conspire to bust down the door and pull us along. Again, McHone takes us to the in between, and this is a ride we want to take. 

 There are raucous and light hearted moments but ultimately this album is concerned with serious themes.  More than timeless, this record is timely, inherently modern, immediate. The final song, “Tried”, acts as a kind of eulogy for the spaces these songs embody. The bardo one must emerge from. The album challenges us to take responsibility for what we experience and how we negotiate gravity moving forward. Still Life summons us to the present in all its complexity, daring us to join in the deliberation. Here is an exposé of conscience, and a confirmation of the inherently hopeful act of creation. 

Let’s find a new language to use so we’re not confused

“Wondrous Love”, 2024

An offering of adapted lyrics for an old hymn, released December 2024, available exclusively on Bandcamp.

**All proceeds from the sale of this track are donated to Doctors Without Borders ~ Thank You**

Vocals - Carson McHone and Daniel Romano // Celtic Harp - Andy Aquarius // Mastered by Kristian Montano

ODES, 2024

ODES - Four track EP, featuring covers of Margo Guryan, Conway Twitty, Arthur Russell, and the MC5. Released digitally by Merge Records, with an accompanying self-released 7”. ODES ranges from interior contemplation to political disillusionment, coloring in shades of guitar pop, country rock, and garage psychedelia.

Camera Varda Variations, 2022

Camera Varda Variations EP - Reimagined songs from Merge debut Still Life, recorded at Camera Varda Studio on an 8-track tape machine. Mastered by Kristian Montano. 

Carousel, 2018

Carousel was recorded with Producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Patty Griffin) in Nashville, TN and released in 2018 via Nine Mile Records in North America and Loose Music in the UK/EU