Carla Bozulich’s work has always been filled with an amorphous dread regarding such things as addiction, intimacy, and mortality, and on Boy (Constellation Records), there’s a definite sense that she’s feeling death at her back. “Don’t follow me no more,” she incants on “Don’t Follow Me,”  while on “Deeper Than the Well,” even the moon is dead. So, this isn’t the easy listening, feel good record of the season. This art-punk hero seeks something rarer, something for which you have to fight: catharsis.

Much of this music has an improvisatory feel to it. Riffs and organ figures creep in and out over rolling drums and crashing cymbals, as repeated lyrical phrases become almost mantric. If ever there’s a regular beat, it begs to be described as lurching. Opener “Ain’t No Grave” has barely more lyrics than “Ain’t no grave can hold me down,” chanted over and over in various permutations. Just look at that album cover, Bozulich wants you disoriented. She’s walking you down a dark path, and just when you’re most unsteady, she lets go of your hand. If you fall into this record, it’s overwhelming. Sometimes the repetition builds to violent fits, and sometimes, as on “Drowned to the Light,” she slows down the effect, dragging you into a dark hole and just leaving you there.

There’s hardly any melody or harmony to speak of on this record, so when the scraping and creaking yields to something rather pretty (e.g. the beginning of “Danceland” or the middle portion of “Gonna Stop Killing”), the sense of relief is like coming up for air. And when the album finds its first real groove eight tracks in on “Lazy Crossbones,” it’s like you’ve finally spotted the path out of the woods. And finally, when you hear the first major chords of the record (“What Is It Baby?”), it’s the end of a long night, dawn finally finding your eyes, the light at the end of the tunnel. And you know you’ve earned it.