Caroline Rose (she/they) has announced that their new album, Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, will be out on October 23, through SUCK records. The artist has always found the surreal embedded within the banal and Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall pushes that instinct to its furthest edge. The record constructs hyperreal Americana fantasy where everyday life is asked to reveal its underbelly. The release doubles as the debut of SUCK records, Rose’s own imprint that is a fitting next form for an enigmatic artist whose work resists settling into one shape.
The upcoming record dips into caricature to tell stories through Rose’s idiosyncratic aesthetic fantasies, as on today’s “Chow Mein,” which lurches between menace and slapstick: “a bouncer at the door // he asks for the password // I’m already drunk cause I // can’t afford cocktail // I pause before I throw up all over his tailored suit.” While reflecting on “Chow Mein,” Rose says, “I relate to characters who are a little strange, who are outsiders, who seem to fuck up a lot or find themselves in awkward situations. Most of these stories are just pulled directly from scenes in my own life, so the character is basically always some version of myself. This is a story about trying too hard to be cool and act normal, but everything is going wrong.”
Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall Track List
1. Yip Yip Yow
2. Chow Mein
3. Valery (please don’t be mad at me)
4. Cement Head
5. Goddamn Train
6. Notes to Teenage Self
7. Conversation with Shiv (AKA liquid k song)
8. Hello Again, Jim
9. Calm
10. RIDE (!!!)
11. Everything in its Right Place
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