Night Watch / Tom Scanlon
Carissa's Wierd: Just as creative in their time apart

Carissa's Wierd in 2003. "I Before E" has nine live songs from their farewell night.

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A year ago, a dagger shot through the chests of Seattle music fans: Carissa's Wierd was finished.

In the mid-'90s, Mat Brooke and Jenn Ghetto, the scarred heart and tortured soul of Carissa's Wierd, left the Southwest and settled into Capitol Hill; they became something of the Lennon and McCartney (or Elliott Smith meets Cat Power) of millennium-era Seattle, taking turns in creating whispery, dark musical poems. Like autumn leaves falling in intoxicating death-dives, their songs fluttered gracefully downward before landing softly in the muck.

Last November, Carissa's Wierd ended it all, committing band-icide at the height of its career; "Songs About Leaving," the extraordinary 2002 album, indeed became a long, lingering farewell note. CW likely never would have "made it big" but were just developing an intensely loyal national audience, to go with an unusually devoted Northwest following. The band gave two farewell concerts at the Crocodile Cafe, leaving many simultaneously sniffling and smiling, like a sun break through the rain.

This month, a new Carissa's Wierd album is out, and Brooke and Ghetto will be performing at the Crocodile. But not together. Ghetto will sing from her solo project, S, a week from tonight (Nov. 19). And Brooke checks into the Belltown rock club at 9 p.m. this Sunday ($8).

Maybe, just maybe, as painful as the split has been for CW loyalists, the split will bring about twice as much inspired music, albeit going off in different directions.

Ghetto's new S album, "Puking and Crying," found its way into Spin magazine's "heavy rotation" column: "What the Postal Service is to Death Cab for Cutie, S is to Jenn Ghetto's former band Carissa's Wierd: an achy-breaky side project with lonely electrobeats. Scarier than the Postal's shimmery laments, but love's like that sometimes."

As Ghetto jumped right into things, continuing a solo career she had started as a side project years ago, Brooke took a long vacation from music after last November's farewell shows. He read Larry McMurtry and Franz Kafka. He took three entire days off to watch the "Godfather" movies. Finally, he got back to doing what he was built for. And so there he was a few weeks ago, back in front of a microphone at the Showbox's Green Room.

Monday night, Brooke gave the second solo performance — of his life. Lanky, bearded, tattooed and humble, he took the stage at Ballard's Sunset Tavern and started strumming a weathered acoustic guitar. Folded over in a simple chair, singing whispered lyrics, faded red light partially illuminating him, Brooke sang about flying over fences, lights on back porches haunting lovers. ... You strain to hear what he is singing about, it sounds important: "I wrote you a novel, made up of lies." That old Carissa's Wierd intensity, in a stripped down, hyper-minimalist setting, without the violin, piano, drums.

He also did a riveting cover of Mercury Rev's "Goddess on a Highway," rolling his eyes at one point over a missed note. "I forgot a couple lyrics and a chord on that one," he apologized to the crowd, when the song was over.
 
The apology was telling, but unnecessary. Whether singing covers or his own songs, Brooke's vocal sincerity is startling; his misty, mysterious lyrics hover like morning fog on Alki.

After the performance, Brooke said he felt quite a bit better than his first solo flight, when he had to do a few shots of whiskey for courage. "It was the first time I've ever been on stage by myself. With Carissa's Wierd, there was always a safety net. ... "

He hurriedly wrote a handful of songs before that first lone-wolf show and sang them again at the Sunset. "I'm kind of dipping my toe in the shallow end," he said, after a gulp of red wine.

He'll probably be super-jittery before the Crocodile show, when he'll do his new songs, "And I suppose I'll do about four Carissa's Wierd songs — scaled down."

News of the new CW album "I Before E" had fans buzzing on the band's message board (at www.sadrobotrecords.com) — a reunion? Not so, this is more of a recycling project, with nine songs recorded live at the farewell night, plus three never-recorded Carissa's songs. One of the newly recorded songs, "Die," is perhaps the band's finest moment; sheer intensity, bouncing between cynicism and romance.

Brooke's night at the Croc is an unofficial CD-release party; former CW drummer Ben Bridwell opens, with his new band, Horses.

• The nice thing about a solo artist is he can never break up with himself. (Which is perhaps why Bob Dylan has been around so long.) And so Damien Jurado, another wondrously talented musician who arose in Seattle in the late '90s, is still pushing forward. Jurado is that burly young man with the construction-worker look and poetic vision.

Jurado, once known for refusing to leave the Northwest, has been touring extensively this year. He returns home for a concert at the Tractor Tavern at 9 p.m. Saturday ($12), with Richard Buckner and Dolorean. Jurado might play songs from his work-in-progress, "On My Way to Absence."

• The exciting local band Maktub and the over-rated Citizen Cope join forces for a show at the Pyramid Alehouse, across from Safeco Field, at 8 p.m. Saturday ($16). It's a benefit for King County Search and Rescue.

• Has it really been 15 years — 15 years! — since "3 Feet High and Rising"? See if De La Soul, that wise trio from Long Island, still has game at the Showbox at 10 p.m. Monday ($18).

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com