Carla Geneve

Albany, and a song about a chemist

Carla Geneve grew up in Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia, and has said that the isolation of the place and a household diet of 1970s rock did most of the early shaping. Her first single, 'Greg's Discount Chemist', arrived in March 2018 and was picked up by triple j and community radio — a small, specific song about a small, specific place that travelled a long way from it.

The response was quick. At the 2018 West Australian Music Industry Awards she collected seven nominations and won Best Single and Best Rock Act. A self-titled EP followed in June 2019, and she spent part of that year in North America opening for San Cisco. The National Live Music Awards named her Western Australia's live voice of the year in 2019, and gave her the state's best live voice award again in 2023 — a reputation built on rooms rather than streams, and one that still does most of the work of selling her tickets.

In 2020 she put out 'Don't Wanna Be Your Lover' and 'The Right Reasons'. The second of those won the Unpublished Prize at the Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition that year.

Two albums, one of them delayed

The debut album was announced in January 2021 with the single 'Dog Eared' and scheduled for that April. It did not appear until April 2022. Geneve stepped back from the release to deal with her mental health, and the record that eventually came out — 'Learn to Like It' — carried that history in its subject matter rather than hiding it.

'Hertz' followed quickly. The lead single 'Bills' came on 4 August 2023 and the album on 27 October 2023, a harder and more direct record than the debut, and the one that established her as a band-leader rather than a solo writer with accompaniment. Both albums sit with the independent Australian label Remote Control Records, which continues to release her work through its Dot Dash imprint.

The second-hand piano and 'Don't Be Afraid'

'Don't Be Afraid', her third album, was released on 17 October 2025. It was written largely on a battered second-hand piano she found listed online, an instrument she did not really play, which is much of the point: the songs move at the speed of someone finding the chords rather than reaching for the ones they already know. The title comes from the poet Seamus Heaney's last words.

She made the record over several years with Dan Carroll. Partway through, a hard drive failed and material had to be recorded again. Geneve has said the accident helped — 'it gave me a chance to reimagine the stories and show some growth'. The finished album runs to about half an hour and trades the live-band attack of 'Hertz' for synth texture, restrained percussion and stacked vocals, across songs including 'Ashamed', 'Passing', 'Woman Like Me', 'Backing Away', 'Wisdom Isn't Worth It' and 'IIWII'. Of 'Passing' she has said simply that it is 'a song about a kind of forgiveness that takes a long time'.

Her own summary of the album is that 'there's a lot of turmoil in the album, but there's a sense of peace in it as well'. She has also noted, with some amusement, that her teenage self 'probably wouldn't like this album at all' — the electronics in particular being something she spent years refusing. Double J made it a Feature Album.

A year with three national tours in it

The album tour ran from 22 January to 7 February 2026 and was her first national headline run in nearly two years: Lefty's Music Hall in Brisbane on 22 January, King St in Newcastle on the 23rd, The Vanguard in Sydney on the 24th, La La La's in Wollongong on the 25th, The Austral in Adelaide on the 29th, Bergy Bandroom in Melbourne on the 30th, Ninch Nights in Mornington on the 31st, and Camelot Outdoor Theatre in Perth on 7 February. Before it she toured as support to Paul Dempsey.

Rather than disappear afterwards, she released a double A-side on 6 July 2026: 'Finally Broke Me' and 'I Still Think About You'. The first was written years earlier and finished recently with the help of collaborator Eldar Ekic, who Geneve credits with making its ending 'less defeated and more dignified'. She has described the song as coming out of a punishing tour — 'life is often cruel, and keeping your chin up is possible, but there comes a time when the final straw is the heaviest'. The second is about the long tail of grief, the point at which turning something over in your mind becomes 'more of a habit than something I needed to do'.

A short tour followed within days: Mojo's Bar in Fremantle on 16 July with local support from Doctopus and Aika Zac, Junk Bar in Brisbane on the 17th, Bootleggers in Sydney on the 18th and an unannounced Collingwood venue in Melbourne on the 19th.

A second double single, 'Guard Dog / Move Dirt Around', is the reason for the current run — her third national tour of 2026 — through September and October. The confirmed dates are Altar Bar in Hobart on 2 October, Waywards in Newtown on 3 October, Brunswick Ballroom in Melbourne on 9 October, The Ed Castle Hotel in Adelaide on 11 October and The Rechabite in Northbridge on 17 October. These are the new songs' first proper airing, and at this scale of venue the set has been built around the trio rather than the album's studio layers.

What the shows have actually been like

Geneve was candid before the January tour that the new record presented a problem on stage: 'It's a tricky album to reproduce on stage.' Her answer was to reinterpret rather than replicate, with a band covering drums, bass, synth, guitar and harmony vocals.

The clearest account of how that landed is Rick Bryant's review for X-Press of the Perth show at Camelot Arts Club on 7 February 2026, a sold-out hometown date. Geneve played 'Don't Be Afraid' in full and in order, then returned for a second set of solo acoustic songs drawn from the back catalogue. The band was Siobhan Cotchin on guitar, Bryn Stanford on drums and Shaun Jennings on synth and bass; Stanford's staccato playing on 'Passing' was singled out. Bryant noted early nerves and 'the odd misstep', and argued that 'these minor imperfections merely added to the vulnerability and authenticity' of the material, pointing to the specific Western Australian geography threaded through the lyrics. He called it a triumphant homecoming. The opener was Blake Scott of The Peep Tempel, playing finger-picked guitar with what Bryant described as political commentary and social observation running through the set.