Review of Little Cobweb’s Indelible Marks (originally published in Boog City 101)

Angela Carlucci began performing in NYC in 2001, alongside Crystal Madrilejos in the band The Baby Skins.

The Skins were known for poignant lyrics, intricately interwoven guitar parts, and vocal harmonies, and Carlucci pays homage to these qualities, with her new musical project Little Cobweb.

Cobweb’s 2014 release Indelible Marks is a collection of 11 haunting acoustic songs, telling of heartbreak, loss, and new love, accompanied by her delicate, melodic guitar work.

Additional instrumentation and production duties were handled by multitalented Crown Heights-based artist Casey Holford, and antifolk favorites Toby Goodshank and Julie LaMendola sing harmony vocals throughout the album.

Carlucci’s music has a kind of genuine sweetness to it, which could have something to do with her career as a pastry chef.

Sometimes beginning with impressionistic, dreamy imagery, the songs on Marks gradually build into fully formed, human stories, often integrating life’s more sinister, mundane, and downright tragic moments, in a careful way that blends in with the sweetness rather than overshadowing it.

In the title track, she sings “my heart hung so heavy, it was its own New York City; eight million bodies and thoughts weighing it down. I stayed alive, just so all these people wouldn’t die.”

Contrasting the powerful depth of words like those, the music is performed so lightly that when Holford’s mid-tempo folk-rock drumming starts up in the middle of the 10th track, “Two Plus One,” the unsuspecting listener would easily be woken from a trance state induced by the tranquil sounds of the previous nine songs.

The peaceful quality of Carlucci’s music makes her one of the rare artists orbiting NYC’s antifolk scene who could easily be disguised as background music in a coffee shop or yoga studio. But the introspective, imaginative lyrics and layered sound are really best appreciated in the foreground.

– Jesse Statman

Read more of Cannonball’s coverage of the NYC music scene from this era:

1. Review of The Grasping Straws’ self-titled debut album
2. Profile of Stu Richards, formerly known as Chicken Leg
3. Review of Thomas Patrick Maguire’s In The Bag
4. Review of The First Law’s She Traveled With Me
5. Review of Little Cobweb’s Indelible Marks
6. Review of Zack Daniel’s Memoirs of a Scared Teenager
7. Review of Prewar Yardsale’s Black and Blue
8. Review of Yeti’s Pill
9. Profile of Horra
10. Profile of Lauren O’Brien
11. Review of Nancy Paraskevopoulos’ Comfort Muffin
12. Blurb for The Icebergs’ Eldorado

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