San Francisco’s Carta made quite an impression here at TSB with its 2007 debut, The Glass Bottom Boat. Jonathan Brooks praised the group’s ability to make compelling music without being overly technical or complex, likening the band's work to “a plot-twisting film or novel identifiable by its lush characters.”  That record also earned a spot on our coveted Top 50 records of the year list, leaving many in anticipation for the next release.  At the time of that writing, the group was unsigned, and would later re-release the album through Resonant.

Despite this attention, somehow Carta slipped under my radar, and I never got around to listening to its debut.  The release of its follow-up, An Index of Birds, has been long delayed, although it was completed well over a year ago.  I don’t know what exactly caused this delay, and won’t waste time speculating, but it has finally been freed of the purgatory in which it was stuck, and it is about time.  For those like myself who somehow missed the (glass-bottomed) boat, such a delay could translate into lost momentum for a band that showed such tremendous promise.  However, it also may help the band avoid awkward comparisons often unfairly assigned to sophomore efforts.  I purposefully didn’t listen to Carta's debut before writing this so as to avoid such comparisons, as well as to assume the position of the, hopefully many, listeners who will first be approaching the group on this record. 

Although Carta's music may not be totally novel or groundbreaking, its brand of moody, slow, mostly instrumental music is on par with the big names of the form.  Carta certainly deserves a larger audience, and An Index of Birds is an impressive enough record to solidify its reputation.  The instrumentation is somewhat conventional, and apparently little has changed from the previous incarnation of Carta that produced The Glass Bottom Boat: guitars, bass, drums, cellos, keys, and vocals.  The result is music that fits in with a great many other artists in the genre without ever sounding like an imitation. Index isn’t exactly what one would call a dense album, but still has depth and grows on the listener with repeated listens.  The music sounds familiar — not in the sense that Carta is channeling other artists, but more that the melodies are comfortable and the narratives memorable. Some of the tracks are less than perfect, of course, though the album is successful as a whole at conveying a unified aesthetic.

Though the band has had a drummer for a while now, the habit of using looped guitar as a metronome in the absence of a drummer seems to have influenced the Carta's approach to composition.  Sometimes this is well executed, while other times it can drag the pace down.  “Santander,” with its looped four-note arpeggio never really manages to take off and can be a bit monotonous.  At over four minutes, it is just long enough to be considered too long, and I found myself wishing the producer had cut it in half.  The mood it suggests is interesting, perhaps even uncomfortable, but certainly doesn’t benefit from continuing on quite so much.  It serves as a segue into the longest song on Index, and also one of the high points, “Descension.”  The piano, cello, and Lorealle Bishop’s vocals all work together perfectly, and it is this nuanced blending of the elements that prove that Carta is ready for the ‘big time'.   The following tracks are instrumental, each seemingly capturing a different scene in its five or so minutes, but generally maintaining a similar tone.  

The album isn’t all pretty melodies and slowly unfolding parts, however, with some tracks building to noisier, denser peaks.  “Back to Nature” builds to a dense, noisy climax with repeated vocals uttering “I know that/ if we try/ we can be/ satisfied” over and over again.  After the climactic, almost indie-rock finale of “Who Killed the Clerk,” the group revisits the intro in “The Late Alfred M”  with a line begging to be repeated, “you’re going home in an ambulance.”

The moods and narrative flow suggest the common characterization of instrumental music as cinematic, and it really fits here.  The vocals that are used are well placed, and the female vocals in particular, provided by Bishop, are lovely and perfectly fitting the tone of the tracks on which they appear.  The cadence of the monotone male vocals, on “Building Bridges” for instance, calls to mind Swedish artists such as Scraps of Tape.  Though they sometimes appear in a more melodic context, in both cases they act as a dynamic counterpoint to Bishop’s contribution, which hopefully will continue on future releases.

There are many touchstones in Carta’s sound, from Mogwai in the mellower moments, to the sad, slowness of Low, or the similar-minded arpeggio-and-strings of Laura. These comparisons are fairly clear, but Carta never sounds like it is imitating any one either.  Though its sound doesn’t ever really sound completely original, it expresses its own voice within an established idiom, which is perfectly acceptable when executed well, as it is in this case.  Besides, it’s such a pleasure to listen to Bishop’s vocals, that everything else is almost irrelevant.

-Joseph Sannicandro