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Carissa Johnson – Blue Hour 

Carissa Johnson had been on the road for two years when the world shut down. Suddenly, the Boston-based synth-rock artist was confined to her home, forced into a radical lifestyle shift that left her questioning her goals and relearning how to live a life in one place. Johnson’s new solo album Blue Hour finds her reconciling with her new life, exploring the loneliness of isolation through confessional lyrics and musical collaboration. “I started to feel homesick in my own house,” says Johnson. “Home, for me, is the life I had before of being in motion and on tour, so actually being in my house felt foreign.” 

Johnson’s forthcoming LP Blue Hour is a ten-track collection of kinetic synth-laden indie-rock songs that serve as a chronicle of a year spent inside oneself, a study of loneliness, self-doubt, frustration and motivation backed by dreamy electronic production and driving percussion. Lyrically, many of the songs on Blue Hour are reflective of the isolation in which they were born, but musically, the record buzzes with the energy of collaboration, a sea of disparate influences coming together to create a modern indie-pop masterpiece. 

While Johnson wrote the bulk of Blue Hour alone in her room, the album swerves any notion of the bedroom-pop label in favor of massive, arena-ready soundscapes, created by primarily by Johnson and producer Benny Grotto (Ben Folds, The Magnetic Fields, Daughters) at Mad Oak Studios and mastered by Jeff Lipton and Maria Rice at Peerless Mastering (Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Bon Iver). To fill out the sound, Johnson brought in a rotating cast of players including guitarists Tanya Venom, Lukas Kattar, Steph Curran, bassist Sean McLaughlin, and drummer Ryan Manning. “I brought in a bunch of friends to play on the record, I wanted it to be really collaborative,” says Johnson. “All of the people who played on it are good friends that I’d worked with before, so there was a really healthy back and forth between taking direction and getting their personal flourishes on the album.”

With New Wave-inspired synths backing Johnson’s moody, expressive vocals, “Wasting Dreams” sets the tone for Blue Hour, blending driving rhythms and catchy melodies with intimate lyricism. “‘Wasting Dreams’ is like a quarantine fever dream,” says Johnson. “It’s about that feeling of being so wrapped up in your head that you can’t even understand one ounce of reality. When everything shut down, I started to not feel like myself and was constantly asking myself ‘What am I working for? Is this going to go anywhere?’ I felt like I was chasing after something, but didn’t know what.”

Blue Hour’s second track, “The Sound,” explores these themes more deeply, prodding into the surreal juxtaposition of falling in love while living in isolation and the defeatism of wondering if it’s possible to sustain that connection under such circumstances. Elsewhere on the record, Johnson plays the role of her own therapist, such as on “Time, Only Time,” a postcard Johnson wrote to herself as a  reassurance that the hard times will eventually pass. The album’s closing track “You,” meanwhile, ends the record on a note of appreciation for the support system that guided Johnson through the darkness. “I wanted to end the record on something positive,” says Johnson. “It’s basically an ode to my friends who helped me get through this year, I would have completely lost my mind if I didn’t have them.”

Though Blue Hour is Johnson’s fifth LP, it’s the first non-acoustic solo record that she has released since 2016’s Only Roses. In the time between, Johnson released multiple EPs and LPs with her band The Cure-Alls, garnering praise from numerous media outlets and, in 2017, winning Boston’s legendary Annual Rock and Roll Rumble, whose previous winners include ‘Til Tuesday, The Dresden Dolls & more. That same year, Johnson and The Cure-Alls took home the New Act of the Year award at Boston’s 30th Annual Music Awards, and were named 2019’s Rock Act of the Year at the New England Music Awards. 

Now, Johnson has reemerged as a solo artist and is embracing both the freedom and vulnerability of the spotlight. “I used to feel like I had to be more restrictive or formulaic and force the songs I was writing to fit my ‘sound’ but now I want my sound to grow and change with me,” says Johnson. “I used to be so protective and would overthink the lyrics I’d write, not really saying exactly what I wanted to. It’s been a process of getting over feeling super terrified and vulnerable, but I’m trying to embrace it and write exactly how I feel.”

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