Nashville's Caitlin Rose tells stories of an evolving country. She speaks in a new generation of American twang and "Im-a-gonnas" about another generation of young American alcoholics falling in love at backyard weddings. The stories are old themes voiced with a new ease and energetic pace. They're fearlessly grainy in the same way that the black and white photographs of the 1970s differ from those in the 1950s. In the way that writing about evolution is no longer about getting richer, sleeker, or more efficient. Hers are evolutionary stories in surprising but truthful directions, where sometimes dead flowers mean so much more than live ones. It's the sound of a future grown out of the past, but not out of its expectations. -Kyle Pfister