Take this as direction: Night time is the right time to listen to Carla dal Forno’s latest Confession, just as the fifth track of the same name on the album suggests. This is especially astute, considering it’s the moments once everything is still and only those voices in our head become fully amplified resonate, much like the sparse, hyper-lucidity of the Melbourne songwriter’s sonic spectrum. Yet, beware of that, too, because what resonates can easily lead down a rabbit hole of obsessive thinking that can take on a truth of its own.

As the fifth full-length album from the experimental pop artist, the listen needn’t much to provoke a sense of deep-seeded revelation illuminated within its nocturnal recesses. This late night story dal Forno tells is one of a friendship that evolves into something more — though what exactly is not clearly defined beyond it being an emotionally-radiant situationship. The narrator may be the only one who is completely clued in on it, but perhaps that’s what makes it all the more precarious on her part and salacious for us in our voyeurism.

Throughout the recounting, Dal Forno’s shadow boxes her object of affection’s dalliances with another from a close distance on the title track, intimates routine in each other’s presence in a way that feels like unlocking magic on “Under the Covers”, and has visions of a newer, sunnier next day upon realizing this friendship might be one-sided on “Blue Skies”. Through a spectral formation of melodic synths underlined by a minimalist thread of post-punk-imbued guitar lines, programmed drums, and dub-like basslines, dal Forno eschews the dark and instead opts for something more of fantasy — much like that which a vivid, late night imagination might conjure — gravitating within a similar air as Broadcast’s physically transcendent work or the starry twinkles of cult beloved Brooklyn indie-pop outfit Au Revoir Simone.

Like the aforementioned situationship, there’s no clear resolution to be inferred by listen’s end beyond a slow fade of it on “Gave You Up” before the album hums into a symphony of surrounding background noise on closer “Staying In”. We become the keepers of this Confession alongside the night, which in turn becomes our new secret to hold.

Highlights: “Going Out”, “Nighttime”, “Blue Skies”

Carla dal Forno’s Confession is available now on Kallista Records.

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