It's a thrill to track a promising musician's journey through the
often cruel world of songwriting, recording, and the grind of the
road to see her emerge all the better for it. Caitlin Cary is no
stranger here, having endured untold numbers of trashy gigs and
drunken tantrums as a fiddler/harmonizer with the Pablo Picasso of
Americana, Ryan Adams, right up to the end of his former band,
Whiskeytown.
It shouldn't be long now, folks, until music writers will no longer
feel the need to explain Cary's background, to drop Adams' name as a
point of reference. Instead, a competent reviewer will assume that
the obvious backstory is wasted space on the page. At some point, the
media stopped dropping the name Gram Parsons every time they wrote
about Emmylou Harris; her own light began to shine brightly enough on
its own to make her early benefactors fade into the shadows. And
Caitlin Cary's talent and maturation deserve our full attention with
the release of her second full-length record, I'm Staying Out.
A second album can be a pressure cooker: Will it bear out a
potentially long-term talent or reveal the cheap tricks of another
quick-change artist best left behind? When you love a first record
(as I did Cary's, While You Weren't Looking, and said so in
this very forum), you want to love the second even more. The first
few listens are spent wondering if you really dig it, or are you just
trying to convince yourself that you didn't waste your 15 bucks? I
should not have worried. Caitlin Cary's last year touring with a
solid band, playing the world over, and road-testing new material has
produced a tight and confident work that transcends many third and
fourth attempts by artists of similar caliber. Add the return of
producer Chris Stamey and there's really no room for doubt.
The lead track is a first-rate example of what's great about country
music — it tells a sad tale well. "Empty Rooms" breaks hearts as
Cary's pure and clean vocal relates a woman's struggle with her utter
absence of feeling. The couplet marrying "empty room" with "empty
womb" may be meant literally, but not necessarily. Our storyteller
knows when to leave well enough alone, let us make up our own minds,
and does it with slow, seeping beauty.
"The Next One" is a lost-love song, a country and blues staple
subject done in a traditional twangy manner. Within the regimented
forms of honky-tonk-style songs, the listener turns to lyrics and
rendition for satisfaction, and Cary's words never disappoint. In
this case, hope for better luck with "the next one" turns out to be a
longing for "the one I left behind," served up with the kind of
melodic hook that subverts obvious tradition, or perhaps adding to it
for future songwriters to crib for themselves. Every time this chorus
bit comes around, it snips a bit of my heart out along with it,
making me skip a breath.
"Cello Girl" is perhaps the centerpiece of this record, where Cary's
narrator wonders what happened to that pretty but awkward girl she
knew of in school, the one who played the cello and never seemed to
quite get along. The weirdos of childhood may have been ridiculed
then, but don't we all suspect that they are the lucky ones now?
"What was her name?" repeats the hook, again and again, as she muses
that the cellist now plays with the New York Philharmonic and has
somehow pushed her dream to realization. The soaring, ringing and
rough guitars and anthemic drums meld with a teasing cello line that
insists Cary is right: A star has emerged and she's having a blast
playing her clunky old instrument on a real, live record, while her
former classmates only listen along on the radio during their
compromised evenings of make-do. It's almost a revenge tune against
the schoolyard bully, but more of a celebration of the persistent
freak who not only survives, but thrives.
If there is a pop-country crossover single on I'm Staying Out,
it's got to be the bouncy, don't-worry-be-yourself "You Don't Have to
Hide." Normally I might ride a song like this one a bit harder, and
it is true that if there was a cover tune out of this bunch for
Celine Dion, this is it. Still, Cary's voice is never a chore to
endure, and I mean never, and besides, country radio needs Caitlin
Cary just like it needs Johnny Cash and "Man of Constant Sorrow,"
even if the moneychangers can't comprehend it. All is forgiven with
the terminally cool and Willie Nelson-y 'Please Break My Heart,'
another honky-tonk jewel that drips Patsy Cline all over the rutted
barroom floor. Other pleasures include the boyfriend-defiant title
track, "I'm Staying Out," and an achingly poignant love ballad, "I
Want to Learn to Waltz," rendered in 3/4 time, naturally. That's
another thing great about country music, 3/4 time. When was the last
time you heard a waltz from Faith Hill? (Just to clarify, Hill is a
pop star, not a country singer.)
Caitlin Cary, however, sits nicely alongside Patsy, Emmylou, Gram,
Willie, and heroes with whom she's played, including Lyle Lovett and
Mary Chapin Carpenter (who guests on the record). I want to just call
her "Caitlin." I want to tell her how proud I am of her. She's that
kind of good. Ryan who?
|
