"With this record, I wanted to make something raw and true. I recorded myself, singing and guitar playing and generally stomping a tambourine, all onto one track, then just added sounds and asked friends to add sounds, til it felt good. I wanted it to sound like old blues, coming from the valley below or from a voice whispering in your ear while yr lying down by the river. I wanted it to shimmer in the dark and tremble with love. I wanted to make songs that could be your friend, that you could sleep with, that could sit on yr knee and tell you everything’s alright. I hope they make you feel good, I really do, and thanks for listening.” LC
'A spectral temptress...' ROLLING STONE ****
'Dreamy, languid and raw … drunken, bluesy guitars and loose as fuck arrangements' LUCKY
'...spellbinding...' TIME OFF
'Velveteen vocals bubble through a pool of Barbarella’s matmos, backlit by Ry Cooder on mescaline, Tortoise-style keys and somnolent beats…Loene Carmen inspires devotion from hardcore bikers to art-house boys. Slight Delay, her second solo album, cements the myth in cherry red lipstick. Loene would have you believe this is the heady soundscape with which to drift into slumber. No way. This is the soundtrack for nights of sinful fucking. The kind you were always waiting for.' PLAN B
'Like a late night phone sex worker in a Sam Peckinpah western ... a bed of soft drumming and hypnotic, woozy slide guitar .. . allows Carmen to cast her spell with smouldering vocals, angelic chimes and xylophone. The Mess Hall's Jed Kurzel plays guitar and some Morricone-esque harmonica, X drummer Cathy Green plays some bass, and Dirty Three's Warren Ellis adds his magic touch on violin and mandolin ... exquisite.' THE AGE
'This album couldn't get any closer to you if the heavenly voiced Ms Carmen was whispering in your ear. Carmen has assembled a late-night, minimalistic collection of songs whose dirty blues accent is punctuated by languid rhythms, hypnotic guitar and violin lines and unexpected bursts of harmonica . .. artfully raw and relaxed.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Loene Carmen has fallen into some lost world where late night country rock is bound up in medieval chains. Mazzy Star springs straight to mind, but the flesh in Carmen’s voice and the huge spaces around it bring out other associations as well, most especially the sexy whisperings of Prince and the Rolling Stones at their loose and lazy best' Mark Mordue
'.. . a strum of guitar, a sigh of harmonica and a voice remote and confessional. Carmen’s lo-fi tales of love and lust sound as if they’re whispered from behind her bedroom curtain.' SMH
'…downright exquisite... so atmospherically laden that some moments are best described as humid, gasping for breath…' UTOPIA
'...dark and dreamy tarantellas...' DRUM MEDIA
'…a foray into the twilight zone that exists after the term “early hours of the morning” has lost meaning. ..the barest of loose limbed dirty blues. Cathy Green (X), Warren Ellis (Dirty Three), Kristyna and Jed Kurzel (Mess Hall) all keep their contributions mean and lean, leaving space for you to slide through the maze that Carmen weaves. A great place to get lost. ' CITY HUB
'Slight Delay' is a songbook of exquisitely mournful blues elements and intoxicating rock romantics. Against a backdrop of hypnotic spectral notes and minimalistic, loose and lazy guitar, Carmen plies late night smooch music, sexy whisperings and intimate shimmering confessionals, with something of the Gallic cool of Francoise Hardy, and the nouvelle chanson of Mazzy Star, feeding on a diet of fuzzy guitar fudge and vague hints of sour mash. .. Sometime in the not too distant future, the essence of 'Slight Delay' - lazy guitar, melancholic violin, and beautiful frailty to the seductive vocals - is going to be the 'trademark' sound and style that music critics will be referring to when they review future releases from Loene Carmen. And 'Slight Delay' may very well be the yardstick by which the same music critics will measure albums by other artists of this ilk.' MUSICWORKZ