Biography:

When R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills (who co-wrote, performs and sings on Leaves, Sadness, Science's track, "War and Peace") first heard the entirety of Marilyn Carino's second solo album, he raised the question that has made Carino (and scores of music promoters) wince since she began fronting the band Mudville in 2003, "What the hell do you call this music?" They came up with categorically-challenged terms like "torchy", "existential" and "womb-tronic”, which they agreed still "wasn't quite it" but would kind of do.

Carino’s singing has been called, “powerful to the point of bringing you to tears” (Straight No Chaser) and “smoldering” (The New Yorker); her music, “enchanting - a testament to the healing powers of rhythm” (Nylon); her music about, “troubled longings and bleak, surreal visions” (New York Times); her lyrics, “poetic, filled with imagery” (New York Post). Carino’s songs have been featured on prominent TV shows and films, including the FX hit Regenesis and the 2015 feature, Someone Else.

Informed by the voices of Nina Simone, Thom Yorke, Cat Power and Lightnin’ Hopkins, favorite singers she deems "soulful as shit, stirring, bravely strange", Carino's second solo album after 2011's critically-lauded Little Genius (which All Music Guide's four-star review deemed, “an artful set of brave, assured electronic soul tunes, expressed with a voice that is free of artifice in its expressions of longing, struggle, empathy and desire”), imagines soul-mated collabs where those singers hang in stoned basement recording studios with Prince, Suicide and Boards of Canada. The album will be released on CD and vinyl LP.

Written, recorded, mixed and performed solely by Carino (except the aforementioned track with Mills), Leaves, Sadness, Science is a collection of vocally- and word-driven soundscapes; head-space grooves formed from layered, Moog-y synths and stark beats. The songs evoke gripping internal monologues about "hope and body fluids"; songs that are punkily romantic despite their overt skepticism of romance. The album’s title comes from a Frida Kahlo installation Carino saw, which featured monochrome rooms, for each of which a sign noted Kahlo’s feeling about the various colors. Yellow was madness, blue was peace, and green; leaves, sadness, science. The 10 tracks on the album echo the graphic, challenging and charged paintings of Kahlo, who’s work, “Moses (Nucleus of Creation)” graces the album's cover.

FULL BIO

She’s here to provoke. She’s here to make you think. Whatever your story, hers is more exotic. Marilyn Carino is a straight up Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Sicilian-American, from the mean streets of The French Connection with a corner fish shop known as a killing floor for mafia hits. Her cousin was in the CIA, her grandmother split the family to jet-set with Spanish royalty, her father was a real life Mad Men-esque ad exec and her dating history includes an operative for the Irish Republican Army.

Carino’s music career began behind the recording console rather than behind the microphone. Skipping town after she finished school in the 90’s, she flew to Europe on a one-way ticket with $200 in her pocket and ended up staying for a year working in recording studios and going to raves. Before long she realized that she was doing music vicariously through others, and decided to make it herself rather than tweak knobs for marginally talented Autotune jockeys.

Her saga began in the form of Mudville, a duo that produced three critically-acclaimed albums. As the singing and songwriting half, Marilyn inflamed and stunned, praised as “Nina Simone coming back from the dead to front Morcheeba." Her song “Wicked” won a 2008 Independent Music Award, and it has continued to be a signature song as she moved on from Mudville to her 2011 solo album, Little Genius and 2015’s Leaves, Sadness, Science. Her music is sexy and thick, her voice an affecting instrument with an elegant grittiness, soaring above violent organs and chunky beats. As a solo artist, Carino does all the recording, mixing, producing and plays all the instruments herself, her personality imbued in the smoky-dark production, expressive singing and themes that dig for hope. "I think happiness is about a person freeing themselves, and that’s the idea I’m interested in. We’ve got to feel free to fall down and be a mess, maybe fuck the wrong people. We can fail 99 times and keep coming back to get it right on the 100th. The solution to the hardening of the world around us is personal human revolution.”

The revolution in Carino’s music is authentic because she has lived the polarity involved in real change. A long-time practice of Nichiren Buddhism is the centering force that keeps her focused, independent and on a never-ending mission to transcend the smaller self. As one who has publicly demonstrated in support of American progressive causes and Irish independence (she was even jailed for her associations), and also spent time with lepers and polio victims in oxcart villages in India right after 9/11, she moves those in her path because she has experienced disparate extremes, and has been moved herself.

Move, indeed. Carino’s undeniable talent and full-throttle attitude have moved her through headline performances at the iconic Blue Note jazz club in NYC, playing and recording with Mike Mills of R.E.M. and Billy Talbot of Crazy Horse, recording her first album at Neil Young’s studio, and being hand-picked as a lyricist by legendary producers Sly and Robbie (Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, Grace Jones, Madonna). Her songs “Hero of the World” and “Blown” have been prominently featured in the SyFy Channel series “Regenesis,” and other tracks used in the feature films "Slutty Summer," "Vampires in Venice,", "Going Down in LaLa Land" and 2015's "Someone Else".