Love And Loss In Nashville

Label: Names Records
Artist: Caitlin Rose
Album: Own Side Now

Country music is a strange thing in the UK. We can't really relate to those tales of everyday woe/love/cattle etc. because in them everyone wears a hat we wouldn't be seen dead in and there seems to be an unhealthy lack of irony and overdose of sentiment in the songs that is slightly embarrassing.

If you dig a little deeper however, you find that genre called Alternative Country; what this actually means is Country-Influenced-Music-English-People-Like. Caitlin Rose definitely falls into this category. Her debut EP (in the UK), "Dead Flowers", had a positive response from the critics and all waited with baited breath for the promised forthcoming album, "Own Side Now", released here on the 9th of August by Names Records, and I have to say it doesn't disappoint. Caitlin Rose reminds me of a kind of country Lily Allen. Her youth (she's in her early 20's and wrote some of the album's songs in her teens) and obvious dose of savvy, give her lyrics the tone of experience beyond her years. As a Nashville resident from a music business family, progressing her musical career has been a matter of common sense, according to her, which is maybe why she has been able to remain refreshingly honest and straightforward, avoiding easy sentiment in favour of naked emotion, her extraordinary voice putting her heart right there on that record sleeve."Things Change" begins with the guitar as a distant echo, with Rose's voice right in your face, the chorus building to a heart rending statement of longing for what she leaves behind as she heads home to Tennessee, rejected in favour of another woman. Many of her songs are about love and loss, but she deals with this tried and tested theme imaginatively enough to pull it off.  Her voice takes on a gritty whisky glassful of regret in "Sinful Wishing Well", the piano solo sounding like something out of a brothel in a Western film as she wishes dark punishments for her ex. Praise is certainly due to producer Mark Nevers (Bonny "Prince" Billy, Lambchop, SIlver Jews, Calexico) who has captured a really wonderful, vibrant, overall sound for the album. All the warmth of pre-digital recording, and still a superb clarity, to the degree that it is as if you are listening to a perfect live recording. As if to prove this, the last track on the album, "Comin' Up" rocks out into a bluesy jam session at the end, seemingly perfectly improvised. The band are the musicians Caitlin Rose plays with live, and they perform with delightful authenticity, matching her subtle switches between country, blues and rock, embellishing and complementing them. There are places on the album where you are whisked back to the 70's, a decade containing many of Rose's favourite artists: "Shanghai Cigarettes" has shades of Fleetwood Mac and Lowell George (Little Feat) with a Steely Dan style guitar solo, and in general Rose's singing style evokes Loretta Lynn, Linda Ronstadt and Jackie DeShannon from those distant days. This is not a retro album though, and tracks like "For The Rabbits" and "Spare Me" fit snugly in with contemporary Alt. country influenced acts like Rilo Kiley, while the album overall enjoys a freshness brought by a talented artist with a bit of an attitude: generally the best ones, wouldn't you say?

Release date: 9th August 10