Caroline Rose

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Singer songwriter Caroline Rose has always been a character. Her music videos often feature Caroline as the screwball lead navigating ambition, desire, and superstardom. Since her twenty twelve debut, Caroline's music has evolved from an American of folk sound to incorporating more elements of synth, heavy indie dance, and straight up pop. Now, on the verge of releasing her latest album, The Art of Forgetting, Caroline is shedding all of the past pretense and offering up an unflinching look into her inner life in the midst of personal turmoil. The result is an album packed with clever lyricism and soaring arrangements. Caroline produced the album and collaborated with Nick Sanborn of sylvan ESSO, who helped stack and distort her vocal. On today's episode, Broken Record producer Leah Rose talks to Caroline Rose about why she wanted to set her living room on fire for the sake of her album art. Caroline also shares an early demo of a song she wrote under a starry desert sky and explains how, aside from herself, Caroline's parents are her harshest critics. This is broken Record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Leah Rose with Caroline Rose. So let's talk about the new album. Yeah, where are you sitting with it? Now? You're done with it, You're ready to start talking about it. Hopefully eventually you're going to start touring it. How do you feel about it now as like a completed piece of work. Well, you know, you're catching me in an interesting time because you know, I wrote these songs a while ago now, and I wasn't sure what I was even gonna do with them, that they were just songs that I wrote to kind of help me through this difficult time, and then it ended up being pretty clear that it was an album and it's finally coming out, which I'm really proud of it as a body of work. I think it's by far my strongest material and I'm really proud of that, and I think it's really beautiful. But there's something else that it's bittersweet, I think, because it's really difficult for me to have to keep reliving this stuff, and I you know, now that it's finally coming out, I'm like, wow, did I just shoot myself in the foot putting out this really painful material. Yeah, that's on me though, you know, I did this to myself really, so it's a mixed bag. The album is very much it feels very much like it's connected to a situation, and a very painful situation. I don't know if it's a if it qualifies as a breakup album, but as far as just that situation goes, do you have enough distance from it? Like do you feel like you've healed and moved on from whatever spurred this? Yeah? Well, you know, it was a series of things that all happened at the same time, so there we was like, you know, this like a handful of one, two, three, four punches all at the same time that I was just like duh. And I think the process of moving on it's not linear, Like you don't ever reach a place where you're like, oh, I'm completely moved on from this. You know, it'll all there will always be ten drils of things that pull you back into something. And I find myself going in these waves of where i I'm oh, I am moved on. You know, I'm in a much better, happier place now. And for a while I kind of lost my sense of humor and that doesn't like that doesn't feel like the case anymore. But there are moments. I mean I had one this morning where I was like just riddled with anxiety and fear, and I'm like, what if I done. I've made a huge mistake, just full of doubt, and and then I get thrown back into you know, the lore of the past of like what I could have done differently, And I think it's always going to be this waver fascillating back and forth being like, oh, I've done a good place, and then it's like duh, Yeah, I mean the fact that you're so honest with this new album, because that's what it feels like. It feels like it's like almost like a primal scream, Like it's obviously you processing some sort of trauma, whether it was one or many traumas, and you like really like we're going through it with you. And you know, I, as a listener, I felt very connected to you and your pain. But I also, you know, when I think about Caroline Rose, like I know you almost like a character. Is that actually a decision or how did you deal with putting forth a more honest and open version of yourself? Yeah? To be honest, it didn't really feel like good. It felt more more like when I was younger, you know, even a teenager, and I felt really isolated in those times. You know, it's like a young queer kid kind of trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged in the world. And these songs like it was really similar to that process of just you have to express yourself somehow or else it'll build up. And you know, bad things happen when you don't express yourself and you have all these feelings. It didn't feel like a choice because I had to get it out somehow. I was just you know, also, mind you, all of these things were happening in the midst of the most isolating time any of us will probably ever feel in our whole lives, like during the pandemic, and you know, being forced to kind of stay inside and be alone as much as possible, so you're just sitting just marinating your own thoughts. So to be trying to heal from things, which requires looking inward in a very isolating time, you know, that's a lot of loneliness right there, and that's a lot of ripping some big band aids of like okay, well, if I'm going to improve my life and if I'm going to try and become a better person, improve my mental health and start to love myself, I have to go deep. And sometimes that's so scary. It's still scary. You know, the characters that you're talking about, they're still me. Yeah, And that was something that was probably my bad of not making that more clear that anytime I was like kind of putting on an act, it was like just a poking, fun a version of myself. Right, but this time there were no crutches because I wasn't really I didn't have any I didn't Yeah, would the melodies come to you first or would the words come to you first? Like how was the actual construction of the songs happening? It's always different. I don't understand it, but you know some things that work, some things that work in there because sometimes you know the melody, I'll just be noodling on the an instrument, the piano or guitar, and which is so much fun because there's no gadgets involved. You just sit down, dress a note and it makes a sound and then you can immediately there's no waiting, like you can just make something that sounds interesting, and there it is, and then the song is made. So sometimes it's as simple as that, as you just sit down you hear something and then it's like pulling a thread and you're like, this makes me feel this way, and this other chord makes me feel this way, and you just pull the thread more and more until it's like, oh, this is what this is about and it's so cool. Yeah. And other times, you know it, there'll be a line. I'll be like, oh, this is such a great line. You have some great line on this album. Oh thank you. The first one that stood out to me just because the sequence of the album was in Miami, where you're talking back and forth with your mom in the song your father and I were in the last stage of our lives. So for God's sake, no more talk about you imagine dying. Yeah, you know, you're going through all these like woes and troubles, but then you hear what your mom's going through, what she's facing, and she's like, look, I'm facing death. Yeah, I mean, and that's real talk right there. That I feel like if only we all did that when we were having kind of getting sucked into our own little worlds and just thought about the fact that this isn't this doesn't last forever. You know, yeah, everything is impermanent, and we all have an expiration date, including the good times and the bad times, like they all have an expiration date. So I need that reminder. And at that time, when I was writing that song, I didn't have a lot of tools to remind myself of that. I know, it's obvious, and now I look back, I'm like, oh, just that is so obvious. But for people like me at least to get sucked into the stream of busyness and things thrown at you and expectations and you know, ambition, right, is that an actual conversation you've had with your mom. It's almost, word for word, a real conversation. And when I was making this and when the album kind of started revealing itself as a complete thing, I did have this moment where I was like, I haven't held back with myself at all. I'm not There's no facade here, and I'm like, if I'm going to put this out, I might as well go for it, like go deep and make it as real as possible. And I mean, man, so much of this as real. If there's any quotes in there, like I don't know if you have the lyric sheets and stuff, but sometimes I'll have little conversation. You'll see quotes where I'm having a conversation with myself and these will be like real things that I'm talking the voice in my head is saying, and you know, sometimes the voice in my head is like the most cruel. Yeah, once you started to figure out that this might actually be an album, how did you figure out what went where? Man? Sequencing is probably my favorite part of the album making process. You can craft the journey that people are going on, and you know, normally I will put the more upbeat stuff up front and then and then make it like kind of heavier as you go along or more etherial or something, and sort of the opposite on this one. I well, first off, I knew that love Lover Friend was going to be the first song. I wrote that really quickly. It just really I don't know it again, the magic I don't ask questions, but it just kind of wrote itself. It was just there and I was like, this is the beginning of some sort of journey. It just felt like the beginning, and it kind of captured the mystery in the longing but to me, there's a sort of hope in it. I'll be a mixed in with some pain. Yeah. What I thought was interesting about that song, Like, it's definitely I mean, it is the perfect first song because it makes such an emotional statement and sets the tone for the album. And you start out it's kind of like making a personal statement, and I feel like you're advocating for yourself. I'm not your lover, I'm not your mother, I'm not your son, And it feels like you're trying to figure out how you want to be treated in an intimate relationship. And you have this love on one end in your life that is unconditional, that comes from your family. And there's all these like really sweet, beautiful voicemails sprinkled throughout from I think it's your grandma. Yeah, Who's like, I love you, How are you doing? Are you eating? Like these really like beautiful basic questions. She just wants to know you're okay. And then you, you know, have the conversation with your mom and you know, mention of your family, which is just like the strong, unconditional love. Yeah, man, that makes me, it makes me like kind of weepy. Well, I should also mention my grandma, like, um pass away the other day. Oh my gosh, her voicemails are like all over it. I'm so sorry. She sounded just like the sweetest. Yeah, she she really was. She's like kind of a rock in her family. But even just thinking about my family, we're also close and going through a hard time and having a family that really cares for one another. It's such a beautiful privilege. I just feel so grateful from my family. M and I don't know this album, You're right, it captures a certain moment in time, And I don't really consider it a breakup album because that was just like one of the things, one of the things during that time. But to me, it's like it just will always remind me of a time when I was in pieces and myself, along with my family and my close friends like helped put me back together. Yeah. The other line that really stood out to me is on the last song on the album, on where Do I Go From Here, which is a great last song title, everybody wants a seat at the table. I just want to be swaddled and rocked in a cradle. Where did that come from? I think I vasolate between being really ambitious about something where I was like, oh I could make you know, why do this when you can make something even bigger and greater and like it could be like legendary. And then the other side of the spectrum is like I just want to grow a garden, have my quiet little life and never see another soul again, you know, Like I kind of flip flat between the two extremes, and I'm trying to, like, you know, find a balance between the two. But so often, you know, I feel hold in this direction of this like intense ambitious kind of like success, you know, and sometimes I'm just like I want to crawl back into the loom man just thinking about your career and ambition and what you want, like if you if there was like no barrier to entry, no money issues, anything like how famous do you want to be? I can't tell you right now that I care more about. And this is something I like work on with my therapist. But ever since I was a little kid, I've always had this like I don't know, like complex maybe about being respected. I really just want, like I want to die knowing I've been I've made decent enough art to be considered a true artist, that is what I want and I still want it, and I you know, part of me is just like who cares? Just quit, like just put out this album. It's so stressful promoting an album and like pouring in and especially this material is just gonna You're gonna hear me cry a lot. This isn't the first time, Like you know, I'm gonna be crying for the next two years talking about this album. But it's really a lot. And you know, like this morning, I was just like, I think I'm gonna do something else after this, like I'm done with music. It really depends on what day you catch me on. I mean, if things are going well, people really appreciate it and are moved by it, then maybe it'll carry me on to do another one. Is there like a marker of recognition, like something that you could finally reach, Like whether it's like getting like the Kennedy Center on or something like What's what would be the ultimate marker that lets you know that, like I am a respected artist. That's a really good question because I don't really care about the awards. It's not that I think it would be if if some of my favorite artists heard my music or watch my videos or something, and we're like, this is good. If if Tom Waits was like I really like this stuff, I'd be like, I'm done. I checked out. I've checked out. My career is over now because I've succeeded. But yeah, I guess that. And sometimes that does happen, you know, like, uh mean, directors or other musicians that I really admire will write me, and that means so much. That means so much coming from people whose whose art that I also really admire. So that gives you like a little like gas in your tank. Yeah, and and but I think it's like that. But at the end of the day, it's really what people's the fans send me that makes it feel like I actually have some sort of value. Like what I'm doing is it just for me. It's it's really to move people and like bring some beauty into the world where there wasn't some before. People actually like send you things, Oh yeah, my friend just sent me this message. They're a writer and they're talking about how the writing on the album. It felt a lot like there's some writing process where you'll write a draft and then you're kind of taking the razor out and you're sharpening it down. So that each line is like Razor Sharpe gets to the point and kind of hits you where it needs to hit you. And they were saying that this album really feels like that, you know, there's no extra fluff, and that really got to me. I was like, maybe I'm finally getting closer to becoming a real artist. And your parents are artists, right, That's why I have such a complex. It's I have such fierce critics. Aside from myself, they're my biggest critics, especially my dad. Do you send him your work and then he gives you feedback? Oh? Yeah, and my dad will tell me how he feels. He sent me a legendary email once that I had made a draft in a song because I wasn't I was like, you know, I'm not totally sure I nailed this one. I just wanted to try, like a different technique, and so I tried this different style and I send it to I send it to him, and he wrote back, Oh great, let me just douse myself in gasoline and let himself on fire. And I'm like, wow, ouch. My dad is very dramatic and also hilarious. But he wasn't a fan, and so I was like, well, okay, so do you change it at that point? Like how do you know like when to go against what your dad? Because you know a lot of times like Dad's can be like God in our minds, like do you go against God or do you just like doin Well, the thing is, my dad's still a dad, and he's still you know, an old white man, but he is a genius artist. He's a genius. Like my dad is one of my favorite living artists with medium does he working mostly draws, but he's one of those freaks that he could do anything. He decided all of a sudden to become a carpenter and made the most beautiful pieces. I mean he could do anything. Wow, very brilliant mind, has no idea of the depths of his talent and needs to be constantly reassured. But he's a true genius. And so when he does tell me something, he'll say like this is low hanging fruit, or like this isn't your best material. It doesn't hold a candle to the other stuff. He's usually right, wow, So I'll rework it and rework it. And it's not like my dad is my main demographic. But I do think that if it's a good song, it kind of permeates demographics. Yeah, that's true. So if my parents are like, I really wish you wouldn't curse so much, I'm like, okay, disregard. But if they say something about like the emotional level of the song or something that really it's a real thought that they're moved by in some way, like it doesn't move me enough, or there's too many bells and whistles that sometimes that is a critique of my dad, And almost all the time he's right, that's incredible. What about your mom? What does she do? My mom is also an artist. She's worked for NBC doing mechanicals for a really long time and so she got really good at like layouts and stuff like that. So she does all the layouts for my albums and all my friends albums. So getting back to the album, tell me about the thought behind the album cover. My friend Monica, Monica Murray, she came to my house and had this special film and it took nine shots to get this really beautiful photo of me. In my I have this red chair in my living room and that's where I meditated every day, and I read and I had my coffee it's like my favorite chair. When I moved into this house, I was in the depths of despair and my mom was like, just make yourself a corner. And so I made this corner with my chair and my plants and the rest of the house was pretty much empty, and I just sat in this chair for so long, so it's very special to me. And she took this brilliant photo of me in this chair and I had this fur coat on and I like no shirt underneath, like in my underwear, and it just was so beautiful. And I was obsessed with this photo and we were both like, this is so great. We gotta do something with this. And the more I sat on it and the album was kind of coming together, I had this idea. I knew the album was going to be called The Art Forgetting, which is sort of a a poetic maybe a more poetic way of saying learning how to let go of things. At first, it was more of like the art of forgetting to protect yourself, like I'm forgetting. That's good. But I knew it was called Art Forgetting, and I sent you to Monica. I was like, we need to we need to make this album cover, like with this same photo but with the room on fire. And then it became like, okay, how we're going to do it it, Like, here's our budget, how can we light my living room on fire? And it was such a labor of love, Like my neighbor Andy Flores is a brilliant artist herself, and Andy and Monica and our builder frond Tory came came over and we made a plan to rebuild my living room. Wow. So we rebuilt the living room and I happen to have a warehouse in the back of my yard that my friends use and Sweet Bar the warehouse built the set. It was like identical to my actual living room. I was really going to light it on fire, and turns out like that's very difficult to do in a city, but why not just photoshop it? Well, okay, So the thing is I wanted it to be real. I was like, okay, I've gone this far on this album. I'm getting deep, like this is real for me. I wanted to all feel real everything, and so I was like, let's really light it on fire. And ultimately the reason why I didn't was it had nothing to do with the cost or how difficult it would be, but it had more to do with you can't control the lighting. What you see is what you get, like, you can only do it once. True. If the lighting isn't right, then you've just lit your entire set on fire and that's your album cover. And so I asked a bunch of people about this. So I I asked, like, the set design what he does? And all of these people kind of said the same thing. They were like, you have to recreate the effects of the fire, and then you can add the flames on top and then it looks very real, and then you've got to you've got to use actual smokes. So actually worked really well because we had control over the whole set. So why are you blindfolded? I find it so funny, like smoking a cigarette in a burning room. Your outcome is not good, but you don't want to see it, like you don't want to see it. And I like the idea that people can interpret it in their own way. You know, it can be funny, it can be despairing, could be like suicidal. To me, it's funny because I also tend to laugh when I'm so despairingly sad. It's like, you come on, you've got to laugh a little bit, Like this is pathetic, and I felt that way. I was like, this is hilariously pathetic to me. Were a coat and it's like lazingly high in there, right. I don't know. I just I'm always looking for, you know, ways to shake things off a little bit, like the athlete was all the cigarettes. I know, you're such a great sense of humor. I love that, and I love that that's still intact. Yeah, I think I like anything that kind of makes people laugh and think at the same time. We're going to take a quick break here and then come back with more from Caroline Rose. We're back with the rest of Leo Rose's conversation with Caroline Rose. Before we jump back in, let's hear a demo from Caroline's new album, The Art of Forgetting. Here's the demo for her song love Song for Myself. If a dormant an exceptionize I am at Time's treasure and a heart of If I'm a punching bay the night to get your face you are the wait fighting genuine color. Then if I'm lonely, then I'm a lonely. If I'm suffering, den i am the offee. If I'm a dead sentence, then are to the from all the place, a hurricane coming to destroying the are, to the return of a things beautiful, maybe your name you see love beauty within me. Put until the let's keep in touch. I'll just behead fallen in life. When you sing this song by yourself live, how is it different than what appears on the album. Honestly, it doesn't. It doesn't feel that much different to me. I think there's a little more production value on the on the album. But I remember when I wrote it. I was I was out in the desert and it was just like a I brought this little nylon string and I was just laying on the ground like looking up at the stars. It was very idyllic and dramatic and beautiful, and it was sort of like the clouds parted and there's some golden hope for me that I was learning how to love myself again, like do nice things for myself. And I'm like, you know what, even though I feel like I have the training wheels on and I don't remember how to totally love myself again, I'm gonna just pretend you kind to hear that. It's like, if I'm a doormat, then I'm hand woven. I'm an heirloom, I'm a treasure on the floor. You know, Oh, that's so nice. If you can't be nice yourself, you can at least just fake it till you make it. Yeah, well, hopefully it worked. Yeah, it did work. It did work. Talk about your decision to distort your vocals. A lot of a lot of the songs your vocals are are distorted a little bit. I was curious does that change? Does that change your performance, like how you actually perform the song, and does that ever allow you to say things that you wouldn't say without the distortion. I think a big part of a performance is the vibe of it, you know, the sonics and the characteristics that make you feel a certain way. And pretty early on I made a point that it was important that I can play all those songs by myself solo, even the ones that ended up sounding pretty produced, They can all be pledged, stripped down solo and be a complete song. And I really liked this idea of if you imagine the solo performance as this little small ball, and this little small ball that is fragile and vulnerable and at any moment could break, and then these big moments of Magnitude and Hi Fi Sonics kind of like engulf this little, little vulnerable nucleus. I kept seeing that come up over and over again, because you know, when you're feeling so bad, you do feel like you could you could combust at any moment, Like, yeah, emans, also, we have the ability to create measurably beautiful world even from the depths of our sadness. And I felt that even at the worst moment, I was like, Okay, I know I'm definitely toward the bottom of the well right now, but I know that's where I am, but just the view from the bottom is enough to kind of give me some hope. And that really fueled kind of the textures of the album, and I wanted to maintain that vulnerability but also have it feel triumphant and magnificent and at times really dreamy, to kind of emulate that feeling of being able to pull yourself out of despair and recognize your own power even when you're feeling weak. Totally, did you come up with all of the arrangements? The only things that I didn't come up with were the string arrangements, and those were done by my friend Talkcats and Sammy Wiseberg the strings on Jill Sayzer's gorgeous, You're beautiful. They did such a great job, and they sent me like the rough of it, and then I was like, oh, what if it you know, what if it swells here and does this and you move this section here, and then it was like the next draft was done pretty much as simple as that. They really nailed it. How did that song come together? And how did you come up with the idea for the arrangement on, Jill says? Jill says, yeah, well, Jill's my therapist. I love that. Yeah. And I had been noodling on the on the piano at my parents' house when I visited, and I think I had been listening to a lot of classical music, a lot of like WC and Satie. I really loved all the French minimalists kind of composers, and I I think I was just practicing and that the arpeggio that kind of just like three or four octave arpeggio. It sounded so beautiful. I was just like, Wow, I can't believe I can play this, because I've never really thought of myself as a piano player. But I think those early early years of piano lessons of somehow they've never left my hands. Very cool. Yeah, I was like impressed with myself. I'm like Dan, I didn't know I could play as well. But I really liked this sort of floral feel to it. It was floral and it reminded me of the beautiful times in this relationship that had ended. And it was like, you know, and a relationship can end and it doesn't all have to be bad, like you can honor it. Even if you don't have a relationship with that person, you can you can still honor your time together. And that's what it felt like to me. It was like, you know, complicated time, but it was a beautiful time. And so I I liked this idea that it was almost like a little movie soundtrack. It feels very cinematic. Yeah, yeah, it is cinematic. I do think when you put strings on something, it automatically sounds and mad. But even if the strings weren't there, I think this would be a cinematic sounding. How do you feel about in a way when you write a song, it's almost like as an artist, if this is your job, you're in a way you're commodifying your feelings. How does that feel for you? This is a tough question for me because I am realizing more and more that if I want to make my best work, I have to put that out of my mind completely, and that includes not even involving anyone to do with business or thinking in a business manner. Cannot be involved. And that's something I actually learned on Superstar, which I made some choices that looking back on it, I'm like, would I have done that again? Knowing what I know now. The only regrets I've ever had in my career have been one I've made a business choice over a creative one. Handsome every single time that's been the the issue, and I did I made a point of not doing that this time, and I really think that the music benefits from that. So when it's made, I am selling a product and my whole team, I have a whole team that helps me sell a product and essentially selling myself too. Yeah, yourself and like your most vulnerable self. Yeah, we'll see how this goes. Yeah, Well, look, I wish you so much luck with the whole promo cycle of the album, And thank you so much for talking with me. Oh, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks again to Caroline Rose. You can hear her latest album, The artor for Getting, along with our other favorite songs of hers, at broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Beentaladay, Nisha Vencut, Jordan McMillan, and Eric Sandler. Our editor is so Free Credit. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. 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