Caroline Says Record Review
No Fool Like an Old Fool (Western Vinyl)
By Libby Webster, Fri., March 30, 2018
As expansive as it is intimate, the sophomore album from Caroline Says broods nine tracks awash in husky, twilight blues. Atop a rich mood board of characters at their wits' ends, the sighing vocals of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Caroline Sallee never reach above a mumble, but a sleepy desperation quavers throughout her songs. In the same way that 2014's 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong offered a quietly unpredictable swirl of genres – hints of bossa nova, of pure folk – No Fool also veers off the well-worn path. Inspired by 1971 Al Pacino film The Panic in Needle Park, "A Good Thief Steals Clean" skews atmospheric and hypnotic, a drum machine unsettling the ambience. "You used to spend most nights passing time on whatever you could find," Sallee murmurs. "Black Hole" unfolds eerie, fingerpicked folk, a melancholic sigh of a song, while the poppier "Cool Jerk" jangles with the sheen of Brooklyn guitar rock. Closer "Lone Star Tall Boy" begins with cooing vocals before tapering off into a cinematic, three-and-a-half-minute instrumental, its pitter-patter flitting percussion, lithe guitar lines, pedal steel twang, and a whispering outro.
