Caitlin Rose The Stand-In. For a song that isn't on this album Caitlin Rose has made a video with clown makeup applied to her face. I find her delightful in clown makeup and wonder if it wouldn't be a more desirable world if instead of wearing our same, sad, soggy mugs we all applied clown makeup early in the morning. Rodeo clown for extra points. We could make forlorn, melancholic eyes on foreheads for days when we are blue and a flower bursting from yoru cheek when your heart is ready to burst with love and joy. The new Love Language is dreadful sure, but this is marvelous. My wife asked me to download her country music and I don't know anything about country music but I discovered an online article that talked about women in country because we can't discuss anything without the proper taxonomy and Caitlin was mentioned in said article and while she's country-ish sure, the banjo in the now playing I Was Cruel is a slight indication of her sympathies. But she's indie. She's covering the Arctic Monkeys covering Alex Turner while in rodeo clown makeup. And she's marvelous, by the way. The new Camera Obscura record wants to be this record. I purchased tickets for the Camera Obscura album and then I heard the new album and they are old. I am old. Do I sound old. Would I paint a rocking chair on my face to lament my chronology induced infirmities. Would some enterprising bureaucrat eager to impress his or her superior propose an overarching federal regulation on the faces that could be painted on your face when trying to express the interior of your soul and blazing life force? Seven categories to categorize human emotion, to neatly place everyone into a box on a census form to be hugged by a bureaucrat terrified by life and the possibility of possibility. Third track now, rocking out a bit. She's got sass. I suppose if you are singing about broken hearts that makes you country too. Her version of the Arctic Monkeys version of an Alex Turner song is something country sure. The kids commenting on the youtube find her sacrilegious for having the chutzpah to interpret the arctic monkeys interpreting alex turner. Are we aware that Alex Turner is the singer of the Arctic Monkeys? We haven't see submarine. Next track, a peppy waltz, perhaps Caitlin's makeup, here on Only a Clown most appropriately, should be bangs, moony blue yes and twitter photos of puppies and former new/it girl nostalgia. She could be the protagonist in my new novel about a man who walks through restaurants in dockers and button down striped shirts proclaiming himself satisfied because his restaurant empire stretches free from teh west coast to Tuscaloosa and here to Westminster, Colorado. Of course Caitlin would need to butch up her makeup to pull off that role. There was an invasion of Starbucks pop girls a few years back with Corinne Bailey Rae and Colbie Caillat and Sara Bareilles and now it seems there is a twee renaissance of goth inspired country chanteuses. They've got their thrift store Flying Burrito Brothers records, their Patsy Cline danglers and red lipstick and dust in between their teeth. Caitlin looks a bit less well lived than Patsy did. Is it only life experience that informs country music? My grandfather loved Hank Williams, apparently, I am unsure because I never did meet him. Hank Williams was a republican. Enough said. And a morphine addict and an alcoholic becaus eof a bad hip so when he sang "In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start" they come conjured from life lived through a lens of unhappiness tinged with success rather than the opposite. Caitlin surely has delightful parents who support her every move including the the cover of Arctic Monkeys covering Alex Turner and her being the hugest fan of Zooey Deschanel ever(rampant speculation). But we're not concerned with authenticity, not really, we are insincere and we lack depth and when we write about music its always with a nod and a wink. I wish I had passion and zeal and could explain to you that this record will change your life forever. it could, it might, try it while under the influence of rodeo clown make-up, but I love it. I love the song playing now, Dallas, and while she was born there I am not sure the geography within is precise. I am reading her wikipedia page and her mother shares a grammy with Taylor Swift. Excellent. My mother has not written with Taylor Swift but I imagine she might really enjoy this record. My mother has turned into an enigma for me these days. I wonder if the woman I've known and known forever is her true self. I wish not to make this an analysis of my parents, although they do not know the existence of this website, but I wonder if her life wouldn't be soundtracked with these melancholic chord changes and vignettes the same as Caitlin's tragic rise from Taylor Swift's best friend's daughter to country crooner. By my life was bereft of tragedy, my parents kept their miseries out of the public eye, I could sense the uneasiness of happily ever after only a few times and usually I was too self-involved in the dramas of being a teenage introvert with declining vision to notice more than I should have. I could write an autobiographical second novel and include the legendary Zayne, Zach and Ziyad Roumaya and the washing machine incident and the sadness of the day I drove to Windsor to listen to The Second COming and the true decline began. This is Caitlin's second record, someone from Tie magazine loved her first album. Have you read Time or Newsweek lately? it is US weekly without the heft. is this a reflection of the times or just an outlier? Can we not take seriousness at all, is life eternal adolescence? Will Caitlin Rose get divorced and have her own substance abuse problems and work them out through her pop songs instead of through a lucrative series of installments in Time magazine? Hard to say. Justin Beiber is the most important person on the planet these days and even he seems past it. Will the next global superstar be an assemblage of cells inside my wife's uterus some day? Ann Powers loves Caitlin Rose. We love Caitlin Rose. Silver Sings is on now, it is a bit Zooey, a bit Camera Obscura, a bit of the girls who wear their bachelorette veils on Broadway in Nashville in front of Jimmy Buffett's. This song is marvelous, the chiming chords and her wonderful croon reflect the lyrics almost perfectly. But the words are not weighed down with expectation. A sad country song is freighted with history and I am not sure a suburban 25 year old can tap into the history no matter the shade of her lipstick. Does anyone allow anything within to marinate these days? This instant culture of posting heartache and disappointment on a twitter account or on a blog red by 19 people per day about less than obscure records by delightfully perky young ladies. Look for a Nora Jane Struthers review soon, Ann Powers also approves of her, and NPR approves of Ann. is there meant to be a superfluous e? I am not certain. Bernie Reeves was on the radio lamenting the death of humanities education in the university and he has a compelling argument, how the study of the foundation of western civilization brought students to the hallowed heights of middlebrow appreciation of more than just their narcissistic fantasies. What has it to do with Caitlin? Nothing. I imagine there are already college courses that discuss her and her mother's best friend Taylor Swift though. The sheer of immediacy has outshone our covenant with the past. Menagerie is rocking. Her voice at the top of her register, the beat pedestrian four-four and the guitar standard Nashville lick number 37. I have pet theories that don't mean anything at all to anyone but one is that a songwriter truly masters their craft when they can write a mid-tempo number that is compelling and emotional. The fast numbers can camouflage vacuity and the slow ones by their ponderous affected pretensions can often say less than intended but the mid-tempo collage filled record that doesn't bore me to death is a sign that you've really made it. Old Numbers then, a waltz with a mid-range pace and gothic ambience and a skronky New Orleans horn. It's charming and forever and when Caitlin's kids are worshipping the fetus of the future this song will outlive even their object of affection.