The Italian artist speaks with R+ about memory, slowness, nostalgia, and the emotional universe behind her new EP, Star.
With Star, her second EP, Carol explores intimacy, emotional distance, and the search for connection through a sonic universe shaped by contemplation. Blending bedroom pop, ambient textures, and a cinematic sensibility, the Italian artist presents a work that remains open to interpretation while paying close attention to emotional nuance.
Carol (Carolina Faroni) is an Italian singer-songwriter and composer whose work bridges experimentation, melodic sensitivity, and personal storytelling. After studying at Berklee College of Music in Chicago and the Civic Jazz School of Milan, she has continued developing a distinctive artistic voice, from her debut EP Horse (2024) to her latest release.
In this conversation with R+, Carol reflects on the influence Japan had on the creation of Star, the role of memory in her songwriting, the importance of ambiguity in her music, and the emotions that shape this new chapter in her artistic journey.
You have described Star as a project built around slowness, intuition, and emotion. What narratives, musical ideas, or sensations did you discover when you decided to slow down? What inhabits those spaces that open up when we move more slowly, and that are often difficult to perceive when we live and create at the pace of contemporary life?
Spending time in Japan had a profound impact on me. There’s something deeply embedded in that culture around being fully present — even the simplest experiences, like sharing a meal, are treated with genuine care and attention. The idol imagery also fascinated me: these performers who may not be global stars, but who live the experience of being an entertainer with joy, embracing every detail of it.
Cinematically, Wong Kar-wai and Hayao Miyazaki were strong reference points — both build worlds where slowness is not absence, but texture. Musically, I gravitated toward ambient, indie and shoegaze, genres that understand how to let space do the work.
The moments that open up in the cracks of contemporary life are probably my favourite. If I can share them with the people I love, even better — because they allow us to experience life fully and privately, just for ourselves. And I think that matters deeply, given how limited our time here really is.
Rather than telling stories in a direct way, the songs seem to be built from fragments, images, and sensations, leaving enough doors open for listeners to create their own experience through them. How did you navigate working with deeply personal emotional processes without becoming the central character, while still offering that space to the audience?
I’ve always loved songwriting in its most free and spontaneous form. Writing in Italian, my mother tongue, allows me to go deeper into meaning. But writing in English opens things up — it lets the layers of a narrative multiply without forcing a single reading.
I love the idea of keeping a layer of mystery in my songs. Many of my favourite films don’t give you all the answers, and I find that generous rather than evasive — it leaves room for the audience to bring their own interpretation.
The cover artwork, for example, came from old photographs of my mother, who passed away very young in 2020. But when I posted it, I didn’t make that explicit. I liked the idea that someone could simply look at it and think: what a young, free woman — and carry that image with them without knowing its full weight.
“I love the idea of keeping a layer of mystery in my songs.”
The EP conveys a very cinematic feeling, as if each song exists within the same sonic and emotional landscape. Following that cinematic analogy, would you say the songs on this EP are more like still photographs of an emotion, or rather scenes in motion, carrying all the emotional complexity that implies?
That analogue feeling is definitely central to the EP’s world. But it really depends on the song.
I would say Star and Too Heavy are still images — frozen sensations, almost like stoner music in how they hold a dreamy, suspended quality. Within Arms Reach and Leave Me, the last two tracks, carry more of a narrative arc, a development — a slightly more pop approach to songwriting.
Star itself has a lyric I think of almost as a haiku. It was inspired by an exchange — not even a real conversation, just a couple sentences with someone, years ago — that stayed with me despite my bad memory. Building an entire song around something so small was a new experience for me.
The whole process wanted to be minimal: instead of trying to add more, as I had in previous projects, here I tried to do my best with only what was available.
You mentioned wanting to focus on “how sound itself can carry emotion, sometimes more than words.” Did these songs begin as emotions translated into sound, and then into words? What was the composition process like?
Most of the process happens in the studio with my trusted collaborator Davide. That’s where I have the resources and I feel safe enough to let the creative process unfold.
We always start with references — I usually build a playlist that captures the world I want the project to inhabit.
For this EP, ambient music was a big touchstone. For me it’s one of the clearest examples of music trying to evoke sensation purely through sound, without words.
Once the direction was clear, Davide would start proposing musical ideas, and when something resonated, I’d search for a melody — recording it first with whatever words came instinctively, then refining the lyrics in a later phase where I think just as much about the musicality of the words as their meaning.
How was your collaboration with Davide Tarragoni in transforming complex emotions into subtle ideas and concrete sonic decisions? And connecting that with your statement that these songs “came from a very instinctive place,” what was the main challenge of creating this EP?
We worked a lot with layers — and often found ourselves choosing to remove things rather than add them, stripping back instruments in favour of something more minimal and intentional.
The biggest challenge was working with only what we had: a home studio, a tight budget, just the two of us — our skills, a computer, no other musicians.
In a strange way, that constraint became the project’s defining quality. Limitation forced clarity.
“Limitations forced clarity.”
Memory seems to occupy an important place within this universe. When you write songs about the past, do you approach them by reliving events almost as they happened, or do you prefer to reinterpret them through the perspective of who you are today?
It depends. I love trying to immerse myself in the sensation of a past time — it’s a fascinating process.
I’m drawn to what I’d call exhausting a topic, something I also connect to Sofia Coppola’s process: returning to a theme again and again, trying to wring every truth from it.
First love, for instance, is a theme that still moves me precisely because of the impact it had. Returning to experiences that left a strong mark feels honest — and I think that emotional authenticity is also what makes things relatable.
Do you think songs can function as spaces where we preserve versions of ourselves that no longer exist, or perhaps places where we deposit the versions of ourselves we wanted—or still want—to become?
Yes, definitely. I think of them as small time capsules — containers for a specific moment, a specific emotional process.
There’s also something about the act of writing that allows you to organise what’s often impossible to say in real time. In life, when emotions run high, we rarely find the right words at the right moment, or maybe we are unable to share them.
Writing gives you that space — the chance to build a world where you can finally say the right thing at the right time, in the right way.
“I think of songs as small time capsules, containers for a specific moment and a specific emotional process.”
In songs like Too Heavy, there is a sense of carrying emotions that seem larger than ourselves, as if the act of loving someone also means carrying part of their weight. Do you think there is a difference between supporting someone and taking on their wounds as your own? At what point does care become a burden that also transforms the person trying to carry it?
I don’t think we should carry other people’s wounds as our own — that’s a boundary worth protecting.
But I do believe there’s something beautiful in wanting to lighten someone’s load when you love them: helping them see things from a new angle, or simply being present in their care.
Where that limit falls is deeply personal — it varies from person to person. But I think it’s natural, within any relationship, to want to take care of someone else who, at some point, is inevitably a little broken.
The emotions that run through Star—distance, intimacy, uncertainty, and the search for connection—are universal experiences that resonate deeply in Latin America as well. What would you like someone in Mexico, or anywhere across our region, to feel or discover while inhabiting the universe you have created with this EP?
Probably nostalgia, to begin with.
I’ve often thought of childhood — like many people, I imagine — as the happiest time of my life. I hope the EP carries that longing for a simpler, more analogue world: the nineties aesthetic, the dreamy imagery, the quiet invitation to put the phone down for a while.
In a way, I’d also like it to offer a moment of gentle dissociation — not in a destabilising way, but in the way that my favourite albums sometimes give me: a space to step out of the noise and simply inhabit a feeling.
With Star, Carol continues to explore an artistic approach shaped by atmosphere, subtlety, and openness to interpretation. Across its four songs, the EP invites attentive listening, allowing emotions, memories, and images to remain open to different readings, revealing new nuances with each return.
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