Dela
A nocturnal collection of songs about the things that keep you up at night by an artist deeply in tune with himself, Caleb Caudle’s new album Sweet Critters (out Friday) is an exercise in finding clarity at that ungodly morning hour when memories of the past and anxiety about the future slowly fade into something more like precious, peaceful alone time in the present. Through sometimes shadowy arrangements that creep and lurk, Caudle continues to mine both the brightest and murkiest corners of his imagination, finding that purest of points where tenderness and grit collide, inspired by musical heroes like Buddy Miller and Guy Clark, and mentors like Elizabeth Cook and John Paul White. White and Ben Tanner co-produced Sweet Critters, and Allison Russell and Aoife O’Donovan lend their vocals to album standouts “Heaven Sometimes” and “The Brim,” respectively.
These songs are a showcase of Caudle’s singular command of language. He sees the world through a hyperreal lens wholly unique to him, one that renders dank humidity “horsefly heat,”a moody sky “cast iron skillet” dark, or a loved one’s “wind chime of a smile.” For Caudle, details are the last frontier in a world where thousands of new songs are created every day. As such, he weaves his intricate tales of redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness, and loss with the colorful threads of living, breathing characters and all the rich idiosyncrasies and ephemera that fill out their worlds.
HORSEBATH are a band open to serendipity, always searching for that spark of creation that allows them to express something they couldn’t otherwise put into words. That’s exactly what happened one morning when they started jamming together during sessions for their much-anticipated debut album. After a few moments of aimless playing, they stumbled onto an idea, which they allowed to grow into a song none of them could have written by themselves. “It started out as this Tex-Mex-style tune and evolved from there, but it always had a cool energy,” says Keast Mutter, one of the band’s three lead singers and four multi-instrumentalists. That energy thrummed even as they devised excited harmonies, gave it the title “Hard to Love,” and wrote lyrics about a very particular kind of restlessness. “It turned into a song about staying in one place for too long and knowing you’re going to leave, even if you’re not sure when. The result is a lot of pain in your relationships.”
