Carla Bozulich owes a lot to Kristin Hersh. Her nasal and ever- upset lyrics, the mad interplay between purgatory screams and twangy licks, the cryptically venomous and self- loathing lyrics-- Hersh did it all first. But if you have to be derivative, you may as well derive from the best. Besides, Bozulich has an ascerbic edge that Hersh has never attained. Hersh is the kind of person that would cry and yell at you until you felt like shit; Carla is the kind of person that would cry and yell, and then beat the hell out of you. I like that unpredictability. Or at least, I've liked that unpredictability as it's been channeled through Bozulich's full- time band, the Geraldine Fibbers.

But this Scarnella... this is a different bird. That's obvious right from the womb-y opening of "Underdog," whose minimal chords hang around for a bit before picking up some momentum and ripping out of their cocoon. Bozulich follows suit, barely singing above a whisper at first, but eventually building into a frantic patter. But she never screams, and neither does the music. And that's the main difference between this side project with Fibbers' guitarist and L.A. avant- jazz scenester Nels Cline and true Geraldine Fibbers product. Occasionally the meandering tempo and free experimentation is a welcome change, like it is on the manic build of "Underdog." Other times, it's just too drawn out-- "Snowy (About a Cat)" clocks in at over 12 minutes, and more than half of that is spent messing with static and guitar tunings. Too many experimental side projects these days call themselves improvisations, when in fact they're just comprised of good musicians trying to prove that even their rehearsals sound great. Well... they don't.

From that, you can probably guess that the best songs on Scarnella are the most structured. Sad, but true. "Release This Spring" sounds and feels like twilight after a snowy day, whereas "Improvisation #4" (possibly an aural takeoff of Wassily Kandinsky's abstract expressionism), sounds and feels like a lot of clangs and stopgaps. "Dandelions" sounds like Fibbers on four- track, whereas "Improvisation #3 (Safari Youth)" sounds like-- you guessed it-- a lot of clangs and stopgaps. You get the picture.

Perhaps it's the label that did it to them. Smells Like Records is run by Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, and half these tracks play out like gratuitous Sonic Youth fuzz sessions. If Bozulich and Cline had followed their ideas rather than their twiddling, they could have cut out the meanderings and had an exceptional EP. As it is, Scarnella is half killer, half filler.

-Shan Fowler