The Art of Forgetting

2020年リリースの前作『スーパースター』が絶賛されたNYを拠点に活動する女性SSW、CAROLINE ROSE。
最新作となる今作では、アコースティックとエレクトロニカの狭間を行き来するような成熟したサウンドがロマンチックな印象の作品に仕上がっています!

Pop music is a game of reinvention, a stage on which artists walk a tightrope between honoring the work that won them an audience and changing themselves enough that no one accuses them of going stale or rehashing past glories. Caroline Rose may have begun their career making music steeped in contemporary folk and Americana, but when they dove deep into left-field pop with their witty and satisfying 2018 album Loner, they found themselves at once joining the reinvention sweepstakes while bemusedly commenting on it from the indie margins, a theme examined with even greater focus on 2020s Superstar, which sounded like a bid for a wider audience and an acknowledgement of the complex rules of the game. Pop reinvention often includes an album in which the artist bares their soul and acknowledges a dark period of their lives, and while Rose isnt truly a pop star, theyve arrived at the place where they needed to reveal themselves in public on 2023s The Art of Forgetting. Rose went through a breakup with their partner that was followed by a deep depression, and this album is a diary of a period of sadness, doubt, rage, and confusion. The emotions will be familiar to anyone who has their life upended by the end of a relationship, but Rose approaches the themes in their own way, and the music borrows a great deal from the pop toolkit that powered Loner and Superstar while exploring darker atmospheres and dramatic instrumental flavors that owe more to indie rock than the electronic sheen of pop. (The fact Roses breakup album has a lot more guitar on it than Loner or Superstar is telling.) Roses best music has always felt open and utterly unafraid of revealing itself, and The Art of Forgetting pushes this to the edges; the struggle in their voice in "Miami" as they cry "Youve gotta get through this life somehow" is too strong to be faked, and the inclusion of answering machine messages from their grandmother, which sound loving and concerned in the most familial way, make this seem so real it almost feels intrusive to listen. The sense of fun that buoyed Loner and Superstar is muted on The Art of Forgetting, but the intelligence and songwriting chops are very much there, and this music brilliantly merges form and content, an exercise in pop music as therapy thats intensely personal and easily relatable. This album leaves the door open for all sorts of creative possibilities for Caroline Rose, and its as challenging as it is rewarding. ~ Mark Deming

フォークの界隈で名を上げたのち、アコギを爪弾きながら自作曲を歌うだけでは飽き足らず、シンセサイザーと共にトラック作りの可能性を追求しはじめたシンガー・ソングライターの5作目。オーケストラルな"Love / Lover / Friend"、インディー・ロック風の"Everywhere I Go I Bring The Rain"、ネオ・クラシカルな"Jill Says"、カントリー・バラードの"Where Do I Go From Here?"他、これまで取り組んできたさまざまなチャレンジがフォークからダークウェイヴまでという振り幅のなかで、インタールード3曲を含む全14曲に結実。大胆に音楽性を発展させてきたキャリアをアピールする集大成的な一枚に。
bounce (C)山口智男