Released July 22nd, 2008
Released February 29th, 2008
Immediately it was clear: this girl is a star. She's still green—and for now, that's part of the charm—but the talent is blinding. A couple notes gave me goosebumps, not to mention the songwriting. Plus, she played "Carmelita" with her dad. How cool is that?
Caitlin Rose, sings like a teenager alone in her room, which is what she was. The 19-year-old's idiosyncratic delivery is bursting with a reedy emotionalism that is perfect for both ironic quips and big, quivering notes. Her quirky, country-tinged pop contains equal parts Bright Eyes and Loretta Lynn—both of them also know how to sound naked when they sing.
Rose's casual wordiness also owes a debt to the confessional singer-songwriter genre, but she tempers it with a clever vintage sensibility—there are moments on her upcoming LP (due out this fall on Theory 8) that could be mistaken for a lost country B-side—secret, spare and extra twangy.
There are plenty of excellent break-up songs—can the world ever have too many?—including the slow burner "Song for Rabbits" in which Rose reenacts the he said/she said of a comfortably fucked-up relationship: "Fall back into my desperate arms / Fall back into this old disaster / Because it's better than spending all your nights alone." Like most of the best, the young songwriter relies on the well-chosen detail: a T-shirt from an old love, the way you still check their favorite TV channels: "It's wrong how much I changed for you / I sit back and watch my channels change just how you want them to."
Another standout, "Heart of this Town," also spins its yarn within the confines of a passionate disaster. It's a country-style back-and-forth duet with Jeremy McAnulty (brother of De Novo Dahl's Joel) about cheatin', drinkin', fightin' and coming back home—each person daring the other actually to end it. The instrumentation is simultaneously old school—pedal steel, banjo—and just quirky enough to be modern: the occasional organ, chiming keyboard or horn section. And, all that aside, Rose is simply captivating. Her relationship to a singer like Lynn goes well beyond the way she swoops up into the big notes—it has more to do with her fragile yet brassy persona: the heartbroken woman who finds a way to sing about it and therefore earns a different kind of victory.
Caitlin Rose is a twenty one year old singer/songwriter from Nashville, TN, who is spending more time recreating the songs of our past than most artists twice her age are able to do. Upon first listen, you might swear you’ve heard Caitlin’s music before. Perhaps in a smoky honky-tonk or a dimly lit dive bar where the waitresses are all named Wanda and the well drinks are only a dollar. Though this would simply be an auditory illusion, your first impression wouldn’t be far from the truth.
Caitlin Rose, though young, has learned from the “Queens of Country”, and she delivers her sonically seductive tunes with a set of pipes that would make Loretta herself proud.
Accompanied by instrumentation that harkens back to the likes of Gram Parson or Hank Williams, Rose performs songs that range from genuinely poignant ballads to tongue-in-cheek tales of teenage pregnancy and primate love. Sometimes sparse and naked, other times robust, her music is laid out as an offering before the Gods of Americana, Folk and Country music.
The Dead Flowers EP is a candid glimpse of Caitlin’s soul – one that truly may have been forged at the crossroads of Country and Western. Let Rock and Roll’s tambourine toting little sister into your heart.
myspace.com/caitlinrosesongs