Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall LP

Caroline Rose built her own label, SUCK Records, just to put this one out, and tapped John Congleton to produce eleven songs that read like a hyperreal Americana fever dream, memoir and humor tangled up with suburban dread. She's spent real time lately organizing alongside musicians and venue crews over labor protections, and that fight bleeds straight into the songwriting here. Opener "Yip Yip Yow" sets the tone for a record full of outsiders fighting systems that refuse to make sense, the same territory Rose has been circling for years.