- Kallista
- 2026
Is there a state of mind more isolating than obsession? The inherent vicissitudes of a new relationship can truly only be understood by the people experiencing it, and even then, it’s nearly impossible to comprehend the full story from within the eye of the storm. Misunderstandings are often frequent and boundaries are rarely explicit. It’s excruciatingly easy to feel like you’re all alone in the throes of obsession; maybe the biggest benefit of being there is that you probably don’t have much to lose by just confessing exactly how you feel.
Carla dal Forno’s new album Confession, out this Friday, delineates her various stages of obsession in the face of what she describes as “a friendship that became emotionally charged in an unexpected way.” Within the past few years, the Melbourne native relocated to a small, quiet country town, and the stillness of her new environment gave those charged emotions oxygen to grow and, in some cases, become all consuming: “Let’s call it an obsession, I think about you most of the day,” the art-pop musician sings playfully on the title track. As often as she’s singing to the apple of her eye in these scenarios, Confession implies that dal Forno is enduring a psychosocial ordeal entirely her own, the music’s slightly detached atmosphere as comforting as it is cutting.
A lot of the record’s insularity comes from the location in which it was recorded. The studio where dal Forno made Confession was located inside a “partially abandoned hospital” — I’d like to know what makes a hospital “partially abandoned” — and you can hear all the stark space and transparency throughout the album, both in the abyssal reverb and in dal Forno’s frank, coy delivery: “You will belong to me soon,” she insists repeatedly in the sleek, minimal synth album opener “Going Out,” as if she’s following footprints throughout the empty hospital hallways. “There’s no other way.”
It’s a fitting start to Confession, because obsession at its strongest feels undeniably creepy — not just to the subject of it, but to those who, like dal Forno, are experiencing it. Part of what makes Confession striking is that she doesn’t shy away from spotlighting her more unflattering moments: “Going Out” admits to an off-limits infatuation with an audacious, nearly off-putting assertion of self-imposed entitlement. But she comes back to her senses a bit next on the bouncy “Confession,” where she divulges some borderline stalking — “Today I saw you walking home, I wanted to pull over” — before a feeble attempt to convince herself that she’s OK with this other person not reciprocating her interest. “Now I know that you were never more than a friend/ And that’s alright, I don’t need you to explain,” she adds in a crucial moment of clarity, her sharp emotional contrasts as apparently futile as the burgeoning romance itself.
At its most poignant and evocative, Confession feels like listening to one side of a conversation where dal Forno loosely traces a relationship from its beginning to end. Each two songs are divided by substantial, wordless interludes that seemingly bookend time periods or stages. So after “Drip Drop” — a sweet, plunky synth number straight from Mort Garson’s Plantasia playbook — comes the saccharine ballad “Under The Covers,” which finds dal Forno in the mundane bliss of a steady partnership: “We both know that we’re in luck/ ‘Cause not much changes and that’s what we both want.” “Nighttime,” then, could pretty easily be misinterpreted as an ode to flirting at the club, but the way dal Forno sings it, the song instead conjures the unique sexiness of date night at home.
But even the most steadfast partnerships aren’t immune to doubt, as dal Forno illustrates on “Blue Skies,” a deceptively upbeat pop number in the vein of Broadcast: “So if you’re vague again when it comes to us making plans/ Then it’s time for me to tell that I think this should end.” Those sentiments feel more surefooted than woe-is-me, however, and “I Go Back” concedes this with some self-reflection over hypnotic dub instrumentals. It’s a far cry from the dal Forno on “Going Out” who insisted that being together was the only option, and it’s both rewarding and affirming to hear her embrace both moods with equal fervor.
Still, dal Forno’s narrative on Confession — like most meaningful relationships — is far from linear. By the album’s end the relationship has evidently run its course, and she copes by indulging in a covert rendezvous, as she tells it on “Alone Tonight,” or with some light resentment: “Now that you’re gone I notice again/ What did you want that I had taken,” she murmurs over a rare acoustic guitar on the Grouper-like “Gave You Up,” one of the moments where that abandoned-hospital vacuity perhaps resonates the strongest.
Confession closes with its final instrumental, “Staying In,” where a reverberating piano presses up against the sound of falling rain. It feels meditative and contemplative, an imitation of closure where there isn’t any. Dal Forno doesn’t try to reach any concrete resolutions on Confession, and doing so would be a disservice; maybe it’s best to view relationships as ever-evolving cycles in their own right rather than a destination.
Confession is out 4/24 via Kallista.
Carla dal Forno - Confession [LP]
Other albums of note out this week:
• Friko's Something Worth Waiting For
• Ringo Starr's Long Long Road
• Foo Fighters' Your Favorite Toy
• Noah Kahan's The Great Divide
• Meghan Trainor's Toy With Me
• Jason Aldean's Songs About Us
• Failure's Location Lost
• Kehlani's Kehlani
• Julia Cumming's Julia
• Kneecap's FENIAN
• Gia Margaret's Singing
• Metric's Romanticize The Dive
• Portrayal Of Guilt's …Beginning Of The End
• The Reds, Pinks & Purples' Acknowledge Kindness
• Akon's Beautiful Day
• Angelo De Augustine's Angel In Plainclothes
• April + VISTA's Traditional Noise
• Quiet Light's Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 Mixtape
• Setting's Setting
• Miss Grit's Under My Umbrella
• Loukeman's Sd-3
• Afroman's Freedom Of Speech
• Jackson Dean's Magnolia Sage
• City Of The Sun's Under The Moon
• Raw Distractions' 奇しく燃える
• Reverend And The Makers' Is This How Happiness Feels?
• Tempers' Delusion
• John Corabi's New Day
• Death Lens' What's Left Now?
• White Denim's 13
• james K's Friend Remixes
• OOIOO & Lightning Bolt's THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL
• Pearl's Love And Grief
• Season 2's Power Of Now
• French Montana & Max B's Wave Gods 2: Cosmos Brothers
• Myaap's Pixie Dust
• Thin Lear's Many Disappeared
• Jesus Christ Taxi Driver's Taxi The Rich
• The Lives Of Famous Men's End Times Elevator Music
• The Saddest Landscape's Alone With Heaven
• Chevreuil's The Stadium
• Las Cruxes' Las Cruxes
• Cadence Weapon's Forager
• The Amity Affliction's HOUSE OF CARDS
• Joseph Arthur's YOU’RE NOT A GHOST ANYMORE: FAITH
• Sloome's Blue Fire Doom
• White Fence's Orange
• Hrishikesh Hirway's In The Last Hour Of Light
• Fer Franco's Punto de Inflexión
• EVOLFO's Of Love
• The Enigmatic Foe's Like An Ocean
• Pastel Blank's Unmade In Minutes
• Tiny Music's Nation Of Jubilation
• WIDGET's Classy Hits Vol. 2
• Doug Gillard's Parallel Stride
• tofusmell's All My Time
• Urq's This Dismal Village
• At The Gates' The Ghost Of A Future Dead
• Beatrix's We Swallowed The Sky
• CAVS' Sojourn
• Terror's Still Suffer
• Paul Weller's Live At The BBC (Vol.2)
• Mikaela Davis' Graceland Way
• Bach Artillerie's Bach Artillerie
• Anenon's Dream Temperature
• Joy Harjo's Insomnia And Seven Steps To Grace
• TV Star's Music For Heads
• Object Hours' Solved By Walking
• Blood Sucking Maniacs' Blood Sucking Maniacs
• Anna Ferrer's PA
• 12090 A.D.'s 12090 A.D.
• Stephen Becker's Gravity Blanket
• big long sun's love songs and spiritual recollections
• Atreyu's The End Is Not the End
• Lupo Citta's Inverno
• VINSON's Raw Honey
• Angélique Kidjo's HOPE!!
• Bad Operation's Everything Must Go
• Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor's Crayola Circles
• Adam Schatz's Civil Engineering Vol 1
• Michael Jackson & The Jackson 5's Michael: Songs From The Motion Picture
• Irmin Schmidt's Requiem
• Lolo Zouaï's Reverie
• Abduction's Malarial Dream
• Some Fear's Word Eater
• Liam Bailey’s Shadow Town
• Arden Alexa's HOPE YOU’RE WATCHING
• The Cab's Chasing Crowns
• HOKKA's Via Miseria IV
• Glen Hansard's Don+t Settle – (Vol 1, Transmissions East) Live Album
• Hannah Frances' Nested In Tangles (Deluxe)
• Florry's Smells Like… Florry Live As Hell
• Mina Tindle's Compass Rosa (Expanded Version)
• Ayman Fanous' Brooklyn Stories Box Set
• Conan Gray's Wishbone (Deluxe)
• Niko Rubio’s Sunday Girl EP
• Sepultura's The Cloud Of Unknowing EP
• Bloodworm's Blood & Lust EP
