CAROLINE ROSE GOES IT ALONE
SONGWRITER FINDS A WAY TO HAVE FUN, EVEN WHEN THE MESSAGE IS SERIOUS
Caroline Rose sweats the details. Check out the cover image of her new album, “LONER”: Rose is pictured with an expressionless gaze contrasted by a blistering red track suit with matching headband. She also has 29 cigarettes crammed into her craw.
The effect is striking and upsetting, yet comic.
“It looks like more cigarettes than it really is,” she says, laughing. “A fan counted them, though. I guess I like it because I wanted to show that humor that I try to bring out in my songs. That’s my personality. Some of it isn’t funny at all, but I also want to get the point across that I don’t always take myself too seriously. So I gravitate toward opposite forces, in a way. I guess I just think it’s funny to see somebody like a professional athlete smoking cigarettes. Or maybe a yoga master going out and getting wasted on the weekend. Those contrasts say something interesting about people.”
Rose, 28, balances those contrasting forces and varying tones and themes with remarkable dexterity. The album finds the songwriter contemplating anxiety and solitude, life and death, usually in about three-and-a-half minutes. She can turn from earnestness to sarcasm on a dime, all of it dressed in electronic sounds that slide effortlessly from vamp to vamp, sometimes sounding more like ’60s garage rock with luscious use of Farfisa and other times riding a contemporary synth-pop groove.
Some of the most sugary sounds on the record accompany words that position Rose as a fighter, done with antiquated gender roles in culture and the music industry. “Where are you climbing to, girl?” she sings on “Cry.” “There’s nothing for you up there.”
“Bikini” has a cutting quality that reminds of classic, barbed Randy Newman. Rose sings from the point of view of an entertainment industry exec: “Put on this Bikini and dance, dance, dance.”
“I guess that song thrashes quite a bit,” she says. “But I hope it also comes across that it’s meant to be funny, even if the message is serious.”
Rose gets strong results by turning inward. “Talk” succinctly captures nuances of recurring anxiety. “Jeannie Becomes a Mom” finds her in thirdperson storyteller mode, condensing years of life into the fewest words possible, including the harrowing line, “Now you’re in real life.”
“That’s something I’ve always been interested in when it comes to songwriting,” Rose says, “How much you can get across in three minutes? That song started a lot longer and kept getting cut back. It’s a challenge trying to tell a good story with the fewest words. Bruce Springsteen is a perfect example of somebody who does it well. And I think he got better and better at it.”
Rose showed a lot of promise with her previous album, “I Will Not Be Afraid.” She was, at the time, already working on that balance between serious and funny, though her sound was very much rooted in the roots/ Americana sphere.
But then she went quiet. “LONER” took her three years to make. The title, in part, references a hermetic period from which she emerged from her adopted home of Burlington, Vt., with a brighter, poppier sound and a persona that could sell both woundedness and wisdom to fit the lyrics.
“When you’re in your 20s, a threeyear time period comes with a lot of rapid change,” Rose says. “And it can encompass some extremes. I think I came out of it better as a songwriter. And I think I also came out of it with more of a style.
“But you want everything to be just right. I’m very cognizant of that fine line between being funny and being a joke band. I’m a huge Devo fan. Their concept about the deevolution of man was so interesting. But at some point, if you’re not careful, you become a parody of yourself with a cone on your head. So I try to get all the little things right. To say what I want to say, and if it’s humorous, great, if it’s serious, that’s fine, too. I’m hyperconscious about making it sound right. Funny. But not too funny.”