Caroline first came to prominence with her band Sunshine Blind, a goth/trip hop/darkwave act she started in 1991 with guitarist CWHK. They released four albums before breaking up in 2003, and since then Caroline has still been writing songs, but with little opportunity to make them available. In the end she decided to stop waiting on others and took an audio engineering course which led to her setting up a home studio. She decided to start the project with a song she could perform herself, and recorded “God Damn the Sun” by Swans, released it on YouTube and found herself energised and back in the scene after a long period away.
The album is an intensely personal one, which was facilitated by getting back in touch again with guitarist Rich W., of the band The Wake. Their respective bands knew each other from back in the day, and they soon started collaborating on the album, which is a collection of cover songs, re-worked Sunshine Blind songs, and originals. One of the songs Caroline worked on was a cover of Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry’s “Heaven”, and Rich W. liked it so much that he sent it David Wolfenden of that band who ended up playing on this as well as providing guitars for a few other songs. This is an unusual album as while at the front there are always the incredibly powerful vocals of Blind, who has a real presence, the music can go from acoustic through alternative, rock, through to synth-driven numbers. It really is quite strange, as they move from the warped driving guitar of “Tribe”, which musically in the more frantic moments could have come from Siouxsie and the Banshees, yet the vocals are quite different and there is even room for an acoustic section. This is one of the four songs on the set originally by Sunshine Blind, which makes me wonder what I have been missing.
Eclectic, yet brought together by the wonderfully powerful vocals of Caroline Blind, this is alternative, rocking, gothic, and damn good fun.
Rating: 7/10
