Caroline Rose Announces New Album ‘Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall’

Caroline Rose announced a new studio album, Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, due October 23 via their newly launched SUCK records imprint. The singer-songwriter also shared the album’s latest single, “Chow Mein.”

Produced by John Congleton, Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall finds Rose continuing to explore the surreal embedded within everyday life. The album is described as a hyperreal Americana fantasy in which humor, memoir and suburban dread collide.

The new LP also marks another step in Rose’s increasingly independent approach to their career. SUCK records makes its debut with Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, while Rose has spent recent years working with musicians, venue workers and independent crews around issues including labor protections and collective bargaining.

Those concerns are said to filter into the new music without sacrificing Rose’s penchant for humor. The characters populating Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall inhabit systems that can feel both ridiculous and impossible to escape, with satire serving as a way to examine the darker currents beneath everyday American life.

“Chow Mein” follows “Yip Yip Yow,” which was released earlier this year and serves as the opening track on the 11-song LP. Rose described “Chow Mein” as a song about trying to fit in while everything around you goes awry.

“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,” Rose explained. “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.”

Check out the visualizer for Caroline Rose’s “Chow Mein” below:

Caroline Rose hits the road opening for Modest Mouse across North America this fall. The trek starts on September 29 in Madison (Wisconsin) and ends on October 23 in Sacramento (California).

Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall Tracklist

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