Through contrasting musical tones, textures, and reflective lyrics, singer-songwriter kariti builds a bleak and empathetic world on Still Life.

Release date: November 7, 2025 | Lay Bare Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of covering the single and music video for “Purge” by Russian-born, Italy-based poet/singer-songwriter kariti. I was taken by the dark folk artist’s take on a kind of gazey dream pop ballad. The single was so good that I hopped on the opportunity to review her latest album, Still Life, which “Purge” anticipated. Prior to all of this, my exposure to kariti was as a guest vocalist on the intro track to Bedsore‘s last album, Dreaming The Strife For Love. Fittingly, lending her vocals to death metal bands aligns with the kind of darkly angelic artists kariti reminds me of, like** Marissa Nadler**, Emma Ruth Rundle, and to a lesser degree Chelsea Wolfe, who have all collaborated with heavier artists.

Still Life sees kariti expanding on her sound. Her debut LP, Covered Mirrors was a minimalist dark folk record, full of gentle laments, a sound that worked well but doesn’t exactly stand out in a vast sea of folk music. She began to collaborate with electronic artists and heavy metal bands, resulting in an EP with electro-metal firebrands Non Serviam under the moniker Néant. This was followed by some singles and a second solo LP titled Deghom that employed much more effects and instruments than Covered Mirrors, more heavily favoring synthesizers, electric guitars, and an acoustic piano. At times Deghom borderlines rock music, and the metal and harsh electronic influences are a little rough around the edges, albeit compelling.

Her latest work on Still Life strikes a balance between her dark folk and more extreme experimentations. “Spine” introduces the album with 45 seconds of ambient noise that fades into the gentle piano of “Nothing”, with the occasionally jarring burst of distortion. By the time her voice comes in, the discordant begins to make sense. ‘You are nothing, and so am I,’ kariti sings, ‘we are a forest of polished bones under the leaden sky.’ Drums begin to build into a doomed dirge, but there is a coda of piano and static that flips the darkness into triumph. These kinds of twists and turns are echoed throughout* Still Life*, making each track a series of unexpected discoveries without betraying its ethereal tone.

That tone comes from several sources, but a key player is subtle drones of sound, whether from reverb, synths, or distortion. “Stems” is like a tower of guitar reverb and delay as** kariti**‘s voice coils up its winding staircase. Similarly, the aforementioned “Purge”, takes a gentler approach, echoing the dreaminess of a David Lynch soundtrack, and is easily the most traditionally pretty track on Still Life. Conversely, album closer, “Baptism”, one of several tracks sung in her native Russian, plays out closer to a drone metal track with a wall of amplifier worship that Sunn O))) would be proud of.

Lyrically, kariti describes Still Life as ‘…the aftermath of being galvanized into a disillusioned reflection of human life and the way it is lived by most of us in the world in its current state,’ which is a statement that resonates with my own tendencies to stare aghast at a world hell-bent on its own destruction, physically, intellectually, and morally. “Suicide By A Thousand Cuts” addresses this inner turmoil, ‘that thought it gnaws/in search for flaws/outrun, compare/so unaware/of a sharpened blade/that points within/you are the one/who let it in.’ “Purge” works to absolve negative emotions in order to live authentically.

The songs on Still Life, whether sung about others or personalized to herself or ourselves, seem to long for acceptance of the present, relinquishing the past of expectations as we accept the damage we have done and must move forward to live with the consequences. Through her lovely voice and piano as well as the harsher, bleak experimentations, kariti has given us a* Still Life* of contradictions that, though somber and sobering, are a requirement to acknowledge if we are to survive ourselves. After all, there is still life amidst all of these modern horrors.