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Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now

Album Reviews

An entirely captivating record that’s suffused with the spirit of its own maker.

There's an air of canny marketing about Caitlin Rose, daughter of Nashville, and poster girl for modern country and western, who rode in on her 'Dead Flowers' EP earlier this year. She's got the looks, youth and savvy for a square push at the cooler edges of the mainstream, but really, this debut album is trad country, lush with lilting melodies, slide guitar and sparing use of strings. This isn't a problem, far from it – in the absence of the new, 'Own Side Now' feels like a classic.

Rose has fashioned ten pearlers, all of a piece with each other, a collection of snapshots of a young lady stamping her authority on her surroundings. 'Own Side Now' rings with Rose's snappy putdowns and earthy comfort in her own skin. As a suitor asks on 'New York', “Where are you sleeping tonight?” Rose bowls back, “One thing I know, Johnny, is I ain't going home with you.”

You can't blame her. Listening to 'Own Side Now', you'd think the luckless Rose has been home with a hopeless fellow one too many times. “You will never be right, I won’t let you go,” she mourns on the otherwise zippy ‘Shanghai Cigarettes’; “I ain’t got too much money, honey, and I ain’t got time for you,” she regrets on ‘Things Change’; and the rotter on ‘Coming Up’ keeps “coming up with new words to make me cry”. But what characterises Rose’s response is the resolve to do something about all this trouble. The contemplative strum of ‘Things Change’ underlines a sense of purpose: “I’m going out west where my true love carries on.”

Like Laura Marling, Rose sounds like a girl who’s seen – and suffered – it all, but has the tools to tackle whatever’s next. The music is ageless, albeit flirting with tethered touchstones – 50s prom piano on the swinging ‘For The Rabbits’, Beatley fuzztones on ‘Coming Up’’s soundtrack to sweet revenge – and the timbre of the lyrics is certain, confident, self-aware. To be honest, her voice echoes The Country Singer Who Shall Not Be Named (ok, LeAnn Rimes), but in style she’s far closer to stars of country’s 70s heyday like Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, or, more recently, Jenny Lewis on her gorgeous collaboration with The Watson Twins.

Whatever, 'Own Side Now' isn’t weighed down by influence, tradition or legacy; it’s just an entirely captivating record that’s suffused with the spirit of its own maker. If that’s a rootin’, tootin’, pedal steel-twangin’ spirit, well, you can take the girl out of Nashville… Rating: 8/10