Local Review: Star Carmen — Blue Blue Woman
Local Music Reviews
Star Carmen
Blue Blue Woman
Self-Released
Street: 10.17.2025
Star Carmen = Lana Del Rey + Cigarettes After Sex
In a national music scene saturated with overproduced commercial releases, Blue Blue Woman by Star Carmen is a beacon of artistic integrity. Anytime I am faced with a female vocalist in the indie-sphere, especially one with an EP titled to capture the attention of unhappy women (such as myself), I am instantly engaged. Give me feminine rage, indignation and a refusal of gender stereotypes and I will give it five stars. While Blue Blue Woman doesn’t quite take it all the way there for me, it is laced with themes of existentialism, relationship breakdown and a general sense of loss.
The EP starts strong with “Fatal Apparatus.” The electric guitar moves the song, while Carmen’s voice softens the edges. “Why don’t you treat me like a woman / It’s cause you don’t think you’re a man,” she sings — a biting and catchy line. When it stands on its own, the song is tightly crafted, but it doesn’t fully prepare the listener for what comes next. As the record unfolds, the tone shifts to be quieter and introspective, and this first song feels like an outlier. Placing it midway through the album may have been better, as it could have served as momentum to drive the album forward rather than a starting point.
“The Great Euphrates” drops the listener into a lulling tune. Lyrically, this may be the best track on the record. It delves into themes of longing, isolation, self-discovery and the complexities of human connection. It is evocative and at times abstract, setting the tone for the album’s emotional throughline and making it a great choice to open the album. This song almost does it for me: It pushes through the angst of a relationship and defines the boundary of self. Almost…
The title track appears third, running just over five and a half minutes and sitting at the crux of the record. To put it simply, it’s great. Carmen’s voice swells spectacularly; it’s powerful and aching at the same time. A stellar guitar solo splits the track open about two-thirds through, which I could listen to over and over. The song is filled with feminine energy, self-awareness, self-possession — everything I love in women. This song is the beating heart of the record.
The fourth track, “Father, Guide Me,” left me feeling haunted: “There’s nowhere you can hide to fool the reaper … Everything that you love, everything you’re dreaming of, will someday turn into dust.” Right you are, Star Carmen. Death begins to emerge as a theme, and loss as a common thread pulling all the songs together. The song’s simplicity (the measured tempo, stripped-down instrumentation and poetic lyrics) leaves ample space for the listener to feel. It’s not a grand song; it’s intimate, unsettling, and it lingers.
The final track, “I’ll Be Everywhere,” is a standout. Every song was entangled with other people and her relationship, and I wanted more from the lyrics — a better-developed story for this “blue woman.” Then this song plays, and suddenly her identity comes into focus: She exists through those connections, through her relation to others. She wants to haunt, to linger, to live forever in the minds of others. This realization made the entire EP feel worthwhile for me, and on further listens, I found I enjoyed the other songs more. They didn’t change, but my expectations for them did. I stopped looking for a neatly defined character and instead embraced this slightly unhinged, spectral figure at the heart of Blue Blue Woman. It’s an excellent song, and I hope to hear more like this from Star Carmen in the future.
By the time “I’ll Be Everywhere” faded, I was a Star Carmen fan. I appreciated the thematic throughline they built — how love, loss and identity blur together until they feel inseparable. Each song circles the same themes and questions from different angles, and by the end, they crafted something that felt wholly unique. Overall, Blue Blue Woman is an excellent record. —Grace Simpson
Read more local music reviews from SLUG:
Local Review: 0V10amps — 2
Local Music Singles Roundup: November 2025
