Carol Bui has always rocked this hard; I just didn’t know it. Sure, even when I met her in high school she was everyone’s favorite guitar girl, but slinging her bejeweled blue Strat and belting out Babes in Toyland covers at basement parties didn’t seem to distinguish her from your average cute riot grrl. However, it was easy to see flashes of brilliance throughout her short stints with high school bands like Paisley Division and The Precious Few, and especially the year she spent with DC punkdolls Princessed. Indeed, her guitar work on their 7-inch "Ripping Your Heart Out" is blisteringly good enough that I didn’t realize she was wasting her potential until I heard her solo album.
I didn’t expect to hear from Carol after she moved to New York City in fall of 2000 to study drama, but I returned from college the following summer to learn that she had moved back and recorded "In the Beginning..." at Inner Ear Studios. My first thought upon listening to the CD that she handed me: "If Polly Jean Harvey was a better singer, she might make music like this." (You know I love you, Peej, but Carol’s got some serious pipes).
The typical review of a female musician protests that she shouldn’t and needn’t be compared to her contemporaries in the girl-rock idiom. I have no such qualms; when’s the last time you heard a chick play electric guitar like THIS? Yet Carol manages to reconcile her technical proficiency with a healthy dose of pop sensibility; her experiences in symphonic band, percussion ensemble, and even show choir have given her an ear for song that is rare these days.
