Album Review : Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now
- Written by Russell Warfield
You can tell that Caitlin Rose is a small town country gal just by glancing at her album’s track listing. Her soft, Nashville accent not only carries the songs’ melodies but actually pervades the titles themselves: she’s not Learning To Ride, she’s Learnin’ To Ride; she’s not Coming Up, she’s Comin’ Up. For better or worse, Own Side Now is undeniably an album of good ol’ country music – complete with all the connotations of the genre – but it’s country music at its most youthful and vibrant. Whether it’s the sweeping waltz of lead single ‘For The Rabbits’, the high-tempo frolic of ‘Shanghai Cigarettes’ or the laid back sweetness of ‘Own Side’, Caitlin adorns everything with hummable refrains and a sense of easy playfulness unique to hard drinking girls in their early twenties.
The arrangements of these songs are delicate, often sparse and never stay too far from the conventions of the genre. The bulk of the sound is built up from finger-picked acoustic guitars along with electric slide guitar but, should she feel the need for a more prominent drum beat or a slather of strings to boost the songs, Caitlin layers the textures up slowly, letting everything take its time to fall into place and build to its crescendo. Nowhere on the album do you find abrupt or surprising changes in dynamic and texture – instead, the songs are left to breathe naturally as they move along on their soft lilt. Caitlin is smart enough to know that sheer quantity of instrumentation isn’t the only (or even the best) way to build to a climax – she is often just as happy to employ a softly placed backing vocal or a slight alteration of melodic phrasing in order to effectively nudge these songs toward the conclusions they ask for.
If this all sounds like just-another-country-album, it’s because it largely is. The fact that the chorus of album closer ‘Comin’ Up’ hinges upon one of the oldest country licks of all time is one of the record’s strongest indications that Caitlin Rose is not out to reinvent the (wagon) wheel with Own Side Now. This is country music as you know it and, accordingly, this is an album of easy familiarity; the melodies feel lived in and, sometimes, worn out.
But, luckily, Own Side Now is able to transcend lifeless familiarity through the way in which Caitlin effortlessly humanises her songs, breathing into them a lease of individual vitality and freshness. The sentiments are nothing new: people have been smoking Shanghai cigarettes and wondering who’s going to take them home ever since country music began but, to Caitlin’s credit, the listener never loses sight of this particular twenty two year old girl from Nashville who sounds, by turn, vulnerable and confident; innocent and worldly; heartbroken and loved up – a real girl singing about real things. When you couple Caitlin’s sincere likability with the album’s youthful and breezy nature, Own Side Now suddenly becomes a record that comfortably escapes the fate of being branded as just another collection of tired old country songs.