Confession is the fourth album from post-punk folk artist Carla dal Forno. Written and recorded over several years in a small country town, in a studio housed inside a partially abandoned hospital, Confession is an album about closeness that arrives late and unexpectedly. It's about stability rubbing up against desire. It's about the way friendship can suddenly tilt into something charged — and how that charge unsettles everything around it. Where earlier work often observed from a distance, Confession turns inward. The voice is closer, warmer, less shielded.
Dal Forno sings plainly and conversationally, with an emotional precision that sharpens the everyday into something quietly unsettling. “This wasn’t the album I intended to make,” says Carla dal Forno. “I originally wanted something veiled and abstract, but I realised I couldn’t hide behind abstraction — the songs only worked when I leaned into emotional truth.”
The album moves through paired states: going out and staying in, wanting and withholding, devotion and distraction. Domestic calm set against private unrest. A long-held relationship offers safety and routine, while a newer connection opens emotional fault lines — longing, jealousy, fantasy, self-exposure. “At the heart of the album is a friendship that became emotionally charged in an unexpected way,” dal Forno says. “That shift brought daydreaming, jealousy, tenderness, confusion, self-awareness — and eventually acceptance.”
Musically, Confession feels lighter on its feet than its subject matter suggests. Melodic basslines anchor the songs while guitars, harmonies, and gently off-kilter rhythms move around them. There’s a looseness, even a playfulness — “like the sensation of tension lifting once you finally admit something to yourself,” as dal Forno puts it.
The album traces a subtle arc: attraction blooming where it shouldn’t; obsession quietly taking hold; fantasy overtaking reality; clarity arriving slowly, sometimes painfully. Visually and emotionally, Confession returns to modest spaces: backyards, beds, night streets, overgrown paths. “The record exists in that contrast,” dal Forno reflects. “Peaceful surroundings, unsettled interior.” Like all of dal Forno’s work, Confession resists clean conclusions. It doesn’t moralise desire or romanticise restraint. Instead, it lingers in the in-between — where love is stable but not total, where yearning teaches as much as it hurts, where solitude becomes a form of care.
Playing songs from her latest release, Carla dal Forno joined host Claire Dickson on The Breakfast Spread for a very special Studio 5 Live. Listen back to this exclusive set and interview here.
Studio 5 Live is made possible by Carlton Audio Visual and is supported by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
