Carla Patullo has made a name scoring for film and television, but her solo records come from a more personal place. Her 2024 album “So She Howls” was born from a near-death experience and won a Grammy for its blend of ambient textures and raw emotion. On Nomadica, she goes somewhere even harder to reach: into the imagined space between memory and grief, where she tries to reconnect with the mother she lost suddenly in a car crash.
Most of the vocals are Patullo’s own, but each collaborator adds something specific without taking over the track: Martha Wainwright on the closing track “Fly Under,” Lorenza Ponce in the violin-led “Arrival,” and the Grammy-winning Scorchio Quartet, whose string work spans most of the record. Tonality’s choir enters in key moments, not to swell emotion, but to echo it. Their placement always feels deliberate.
Tracks like “Our Love Is” and the title piece open the album with that uneasy push between loss and hope. “A Handblown World” sounds like a dark lullaby stretched across a memory that’s barely holding together. “Undercurrent” folds in rainfall and cello like the music is sinking below the surface.
The final pieces are warmer. “Lightning” and “Fly Under” aren’t neat resolutions, but they do settle into something gentler. Wainwright’s voice works as a counterpart to Patullo’s—less about contrast, more about shared experience. That closing moment doesn’t break the spell. It just lets the door stay open.
Patullo has said this record is about imagining conversations she never got to have. She lets them remain soft around the edges, the way actual memories often are.
Nomadica wouldn’t feel out of place scoring a scene in a Terrence Malick film or threading through a meditative indie doc. It leans into mood over motion: more for long walks, late nights, or films that let silence speak.
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