Music Reviews – Issue #75

[1] Caitlin Rose – Own Side Now

I grew up in Nashville, TN.  That being said, I would never be so arrogant as to claim that I “know” country music.  However I do “know” people who “know” country music.  Listening to Own Side Now, I could only reach the conclusion that Caitlin Rose “knows” country music.

That doesn’t just mean that she could recite multiple songs off Garth Brooks’ No Fences from memory (who couldn’t?) I’m saying country music has its own guest room in her brain and it doesn’t call before it comes over. While Rose is a traditionalist at heart, she modernizes her approach with a sometimes flippant, but intimate lyrical approach and by subtly synthesizing various songwriting traditions.

Her voice will make you wish she was your childhood friend, the songs will make you want to be good to your woman, and the band will make you want to pawn your Takamine for a PS3.  When it comes to cute girls doing revivalist country songs, Caitlin Rose is Phil Hoffman playing Truman Capote in Capote and Jenny Lewis is that other guy playing Truman Capote in that other movie about Truman Capote that came out around the same time.

- Jeremy McAnulty

[2] Comet Gain  - Howl Of The Lonely Crowd

Comet Gain has been around since 1992, with Howl Of The Lonely Crowd being the band’s 6th studio album. Which I guess means they’ve got a pretty genuine “We wuz there” claim to genre as they dabble throughout the album in Brit pop, post punk, standard-issue indie, twee, and garage.

Although, really, “dabble” is a bit of a misnomer here, suggesting that Comet Gain is putting on a different hat every time they touch on a different sound. In reality the whole thing probably best fits under the blanket term – according to a perhaps outdated (mid 90s?) definition of what the term means – “indie rock.”

It’s the type of record you could imagine younger contemporaries Yuck looking to for a template on how to make that chorus soar (“Clang Of The Concrete Swans”), or Los Campesinos! tapping for advice on how to make a boy-girl shout along work properly (“Working Circle Explosive!”), or Vivian Girls seeking for other examples of charmingly off-key sad-girl dirges (“Ballad Of Frankie Machine”).

However, instead of Howl existing to inspire those bands, it stands ably beside their records, and perhaps because of this, is a remarkably fresh-sounding collection for a group that has been in the game for nearly 20 years.

- Chad Buchholz

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