Kathryn Mohr releases Carve
CD/LP/Digital out today on The Flenser
Photo by Senny Mau
"...a frustrated, bare-bones, soul-searching, quietly horrifying album that leaves itself inside you like a memory chipped into a craggy rock in the middle of nowhere." - FLOOD Magazine
"...the Oakland electronic folk artist draws blood, completing her metamorphosis from 'more evil Grouper' to 'less evil PJ Harvey.'” - Pitchfork
"You can feel that sense of isolation in the gothic ambiance... which is built on little more than Mohr's layered vocals and one funereal-sounding electric guitar..." - Stereogum
The second full-length by Bay Area artist Kathryn Mohr—Carve— was written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a rural singlewide in the Mojave Desert, the album centers on love experienced as a form of grief, not as an aftermath of loss, but as a condition of intimacy itself. The album is out today on The Flenser.
Mohr describes Carve as an album about how memory exists outside the body, embedded in places and landscapes. It is shaped by her first return to the American Southwest since a childhood road trip at age five, and by the experience of moving through terrain that holds emotional weight long after its origins fade. The record considers how intimacy feels after years of isolation, and what it takes to carve out a life that allows for trust, presence, and feeling rather than mere survival. The project took form after a difficult tour that ended in Joshua Tree. Mohr pointed her car into the desert and drove alone, crisscrossing the Mojave on dirt roads. Months later, she returned to record the album, working alone with an acoustic guitar, a field recorder, and limited supplies.
She comments: "'Carve' feels very raw, so raw I feel i’ve barely processed it, despite its having come out of me. It’s almost pure expression, an experiment, telling my inner critic and perfectionist to shut up for a moment and let me do this. 'Carve' is partially a tying off of old strings in my life, and partially a result of visions I had while alone in the Mojave desert. For the first time in my life, I feel I have found a place where I am safe and can create without fear and that process was akin to carving wood with a dull knife, something I used to do a lot when I was younger. I’d gash myself and my hands would cramp up, but I knew nothing better, didn't know how to sharpen a knife or ask for that, I didn't know it could be any easier. The process of finding myself, and placing myself in the world so that I can create, which is all I have ever felt compelled to do, was full of violence, passion, sweat and blood, nightmarish and tender at times, and many of the experiences and emotions of that bleed through in 'Carve.'"
Listen / share Carve
The time Mohr spent recording Carve in the desert did not create isolation so much as mirror it. Working alone out of an old, western-themed jail Airbnb, the physical enclosure reflected the emotional conditions under which much of the record had been written: distance, restraint, and long stretches of stillness. In that context, love was not experienced as escape, but as something inseparable from impermanence and the awareness of loss. This tension between connection and inevitability sits at the center of Carve.
Some of the album’s songs were written earlier, during a prolonged period marked by emotional distance and apathy. Over those four years, Mohr was working through unprocessed childhood memories and their long-term effects on her ability to connect with others. The work was slow and difficult, involving a fundamental reshaping of how she related to herself and to the world.
Carve was mixed by Richard Chowenhill of Flenser label mates Agriculture. Rather than offering resolution, the album documents the act of remaining present within tension. Carve is not about escaping grief, but about accepting it as inseparable from love itself.
Carve, cover art:
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