Caroline Rose Announces New Album, Shares “Chow Mein”

Last year, Caroline Rose leaked their own album year of the slug, a collection recorded directly into a phone via GarageBand. The lo-fi setting gave the songs a brittle immediacy. Now Rose moves in the opposite direction: on October 23, they’ll release Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall, a full-length produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen) and out on their own SUCK records.

The second single, “Chow Mein,” dials up the theatricality. Congleton’s production amplifies the song’s humor without softening its uneasy core. Rose describes the track as a story about “trying too hard to be cool and act normal, but everything is going wrong.” The characters, they add, are drawn from personal scenes: “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.”

The album follows May’s “Yip Yip Yow,” and the tracklist—with song titles like “Cement Head” and “Conversation with Shiv (AKA liquid k song)”—suggests Rose’s taste for offbeat detail remains intact. A lengthy tour with Modest Mouse runs through the fall, followed by a series of in-store appearances across the UK and Europe.