The hype machine has started to rev up in the UK for Caitlin Rose, a Tennessee-based country singer-songwriter, with positive reviews in everything from the BBC, to The Word via the Sunday Times. And this is no bad thing; country music still has a bad name here, being largely associated with line-dancing and straw-chewing rednecks who’s as soon shoot you as sodomise you.
Those of us in the know (like me, natch) understand that country isn’t just the preserve of gun-totin’ crackers, but a fine genre of music that encompasses the full spectrum of the human condition in all its glory, and with good tunes, too. And in digging around a little about this lady, I stumbled across her cover of Gram Parsons’ “Still Feelin’ Blue”. Starting as much more stripped-down than the original, just her and an acoustic, but with a ramshackle charm. If you’re thinking “That’s it? What about the original’s ebulliently yawling charm?”, all I can say is just keep listening.
Must give the new album a try (“Own Side Now”), if this is what she can do. As for the original; hell, if you don’t like this, you don’t like music.
Loft And Lost 