Caitlin Rose
BIOGRAPHY
Placing herself under the country-soul fusion headline of Gram Parsons’ ‘cosmic American music’, Caitlin Rose is a country singer who has no interest in pandering to indie or pop crowds, seldom taking her influences from anything contemporary.
Rose is a singer songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee, whose sharp lyrics belie her 22 years. Steeped in the influence of country legends such as Patsy Cline (who she covers to startling effect on the record) and Buddy Holly, Caitlin Rose is part of a new generation of heartbroken, whiskey-soaked young American country and folk singers who are fusing original song writing talents with classic country influences. Having no interest in an ‘alternative-country’ tag, Rose prefers to let only an acoustic guitar and her remarkable, voice speak for her music, and manages to combine genuine, nourishing country with a clandestine, confessional intimacy more akin to Kimya Dawson or Conor Oberst.
Her precocious and charismatic talent seems to be found particularly in her traversing of both light hearted and more serious topics with an easy humour and sardonic wit . The EP kicks off with a jaunty ode to accidental pregnancy, Shotgun Wedding – available from Rockfeedback as a FREE DOWNLOAD to whet your appetite for her show in May. It finds Ms. Rose, tongue firmly in cheek, crooning sweetly and sarcastically the mantra ‘meet, conceive and marry’ as the template for true love in America’s backwaters. ‘It’s the right thing boy/ Put that ring around her finger/ And don’t you stop to worry that the feeling won’t linger…’ is characteristic of her witty, endearing new-folk-country tales chronicling the goings-on in the Southern-cosmopolitan, musically-enriched anomaly that is Nashville.
Caitlin is currently in the UK to promote her debut UK release, 7 track EP Dead Flowers, first released in the US in 2008, which has already been followed up by a full length across the Atlantic.
Accompanied by instrumentation that harks back to the likes of Gram Parson or Hank Williams, Rose plays songs that range from genuinely poignant ballads to raucous sing-alongs, sometimes sparse and naked, her strong vocals punctuated only by tambourine, other times robust with a full band and stomping drums.
The humour of a Southern Kimya Dawson is showcased most in the childish and quick wordplay of Gorilla Man -‘I never thought I’d see the day/ that you would leave and swing away into another’s tree/ and now you’re with some chimpanzee/ and all she’s doing’s aping me’ which she belts out with an impressive, strong clear voice.
Caitlin Rose draws to mind the pure country pop of Jenny Lewis, the early folk experiments of Beck and the sheer cheek of Moldy Peaches, and owes an obvious debt to the stock giants of the country scene, a debt which she is the first to acknowledge. Rose takes the simplicity of country music and connects it with the excitement of forward-thinking and original American young and independent sounds.
NEWS
Click for free download of the first track from Dead Flowers, the opening track from Caitlin Rose's brand new EP 'Dead Flowers' which is released on 14th February through Names. She’s in the UK in May to play the Rockfeedback night at the Old Queen’s Head on the 5th. Buy your tickets here.
LINKS
www.myspace.com/caitlinrosesongs
http://namesrecords.com/?cat=20
http://www.last.fm/search?q=caitlin+rose&from=a
LIVE
5th May at Old Queen’s Head- London
VIDEO