Caitlin Rose – Dead Flowers (Names)

Oh blimey. Some marketing person broke into my brain and designed a singer – Weird Science-style – to ruin my life,

I say ruin but only in the “I will never listen to anything else ever again” kinda way. Nashville-born (REALLY) 22-year-old Caitlin Rose could have wandered off the screen of a chipper Reese Witherspoon movie about a perky country singer with attitude. She has the name, the heritage and the achingly bar-room voice destined for a biopic. She’s perfect. Sniff.

A precursor to a full length album due later in 2010 (when? when? when? when?), Dead Flowers features the likes of Andy Wilkins on pedal steel guitar, Zach Serchfield on guitar, Bob Grant on mandolin and Travis Collingsworth on bass. It’s a beautiful snapshot of an artist I am in danger of loving until I die.

Dead Flowers refers to the title track, a cover of the Rolling Stones song. She also covers Patsy Cline’s Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray with gut-wrenching Nashville authenticity.

A couple of her self-penned tracks, Docket and Gorilla Man– reminiscent of Jenny Lewis and Kimya Dawson – are feisty, potty-mouthed modern numbers (“the surgeon general can suck on my dick”). But T-Shirt is a delicate and timeless-sounding (though a capella) country standard.

Hazel Davis

http://www.myspace.com/caitlinrosesongs