Bio
Booking one-sheet (updated for fall '07):
Lower Res PDF (for web viewing)
Booking one-sheet: Higher Res
PDF
This is How I Recover one-sheet:
PDF
Jeff Buckley was once pitched to a Columbia Records A&R man as a "Heritage Artist" in the same vein as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. It is in their shadow that Carol Bui emerges as perhaps the most singular and distinct voice of the Washington, DC music scene. Her self-released debut, This is How I Recover, fused lyrical guitar lines with poetic phrasing and revels in its ability to dish finely crafted narratives within a framework of heavy friction post-punk rock.
This is music for people who listen to records.
Carol's second full-length, Everyone Wore White, is the product of a collaboration between Carol and Aloha's TJ Lipple, who is prominently featured on drums. It's smarter, bolder, and more confrontational than anything you've heard in recent years, colored with scratchy strings, agitated guitars, and a cathartic voice that tells of displaced spirituality and psychosis. Yet melody is never sacrificed; it is a tight union of beauty and terror.
Everyone Wore White also features guest appearances by Chad Clark (Beauty Pill, Dischord Records) and Daniel Hart (St. Vincent, The Physics of Meaning, ex-Polyphonic Spree). The release is set for October 2, 2007 via 54º 40' or Fight! Records (The Life and Times, 31 Knots).
Carol is touring with her band nationally throughout the fall and winter to support this release.
Acts she has shared the stage with include Maserati (!!!, LCD Soundsystem), David Karsten Daniels (Fat Cat), Pattern is Movement (Hometapes), The Moaners (Yep-Roc), Hail Social (Polyvinyl), Des _ark, The Spinto Band (Bar/None), Beauty Pill (Dischord), St. Vincent (Beggars Group) and many others.
RIYL: Jeff Buckley, Helium, Ambulette, Throwing Muses, Sonic Youth, Shannon Wright, June of '44
Listen on MySpace: myspace.com/carolbui
Abbreviated Press
For full text articles, go here.
"This Is How I Recover is a remarkable album; it doesnt show promise, it
delivers on it. Carol Bui deserves attention, and she wont be
self-releasing her work for long."
-Whitney Strub, Popmatters
"It's smart and raucous, introspective and loud, and proof that the
revolution's unofficial credo - i.e., women can indeed make sharp, intelligent,
and universally appealing rock music without relying on the crutches of
militant feminism - still lives on."
-Joon Kim, Delusions of Adequacy
"...pure, unfiltered rock attitude and raw talent...Bui is the authoress of
rock songs that live up to the potential of the genre, a dying art given her
contemporaries...Thank you, Carol Bui, for making an album that
demonstrates rock's essentials with beauty, personality, and wit."
-Andres Carrera, Upbeetmusic.com
"Carol Bui sticks to a formula of dissonance, passion, dark wit and
crafty songwriting to provide heavy, charging rock numbers, delivering track
after track with hurricane like force."
-Shawn M. Haney, Copper Press
"Washington's Carol Bui plays guitar like a girl--a pithy, no-BS, hard-rocking
girl who favors fretwork dissonance over pretty jangle."
-Bret McCabe, Baltimore City Paper
"Her intricately sloppy guitar style, with its bluesy grit and jarring
additive rhythms, makes me want to mosh and self-mutilate. Whoever
"discovers" this girl, takes her out of Fairfax, and gives her a big contract
might have an icon on his hands."
-Daniel Patrick, DC Pulse