Biography of Carina Round

No one could rightly accuse Carina Round of playing it safe. Listen to her first two dark, defiant albums. Hear that voice—that whisper to a wail to a wallop of a voice. Yet chances are you haven’t had the privilege—and that’s the point. There’s safety in obscurity, but with Slow Motion Addict, Carina Round is ready to tear it up into tiny pieces. “I had the chance to make a lot of self-indulgent music—I threw my toys out of my cot for ten years,” Carina explains. “Now it’s time to articulate what I want to say.”

What Carina articulates on Slow Motion Addict will startle and unsettle you —push you to the edge. The insatiable leadoff track “Stolen Car,” is all charged-up percussion and chimey guitar. The track, “How Many Times,” is deceptively catchy puncture pop, a contrast to the atonal, chunky assault and battery of “Take The Money.” Then, soon as you think you’ve got her pegged, Carina takes you to another plane—with the dreamy, naked, “Downslow,” the weightless music-box ballet of “The City,” the anthemic “big rock” sound of the first single “Come To You” and “January Heart,” a contemplative, bittersweet, sneaks-up-on-you love song. “There’s wide variety on this record,” Carina says. “It starts out a bit quirky and light, then moves into something darker, more ‘arty,’ which are the two sides of my personality.”

Expressing her personality through music has been Carina’s goal since her English Midlands childhood. “At five years old I was singing into the mirror with a celery stick and the rest is history,” she says with characteristic cheeky humor. Actually, the rest is hard work—beginning with gigs in Birmingham clubs, and recording her debut, The First Blood Mystery, which bowed when Carina was 22. By her second LP, The Disconnection, Carina was garnering reviews that likened her to Bjork, Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant, and touring with everyone from Coldplay to Ryan Adams to James Brown. ...