Review: Whitney Rose, We Still Go to Rodeos

If Whitney Rose’s voice was a colour it would be cerulean, in all the lovely adjectives that shade conjures: crisp, clear, and as sparkling as a placid lake at summer sundown. And on the Canuck-reared, Austin-based singer/songwriter’s latest, that voice is even more striking for the contrast it creates against the lyrics, which are about three country miles left of centre.

Take faux-cheerful album opener Just Circumstance, which breezily traces the slow but certain spiral of the closed-mouthed, knocked-up girlfriend of a felonious fiend. Then there’s the woozy, self-evident You’d Blame Me for the Rain, which finds our fed-up heroine at the outer limits of tolerance, though buoyed by a nifty guitar solo. Yup, the songs on We Still Go to Rodeos — broadly described as poppy Americana and produced, notably, by Paul Kolderie (Uncle Tupelo, Radiohead, Pixies, Morphine) — are well-crafted, smart, and… kind of boring. The propulsive In a Rut has frenetic juices pumping through its veins, and wistful A Hundred Shades of Blue precisely locates the moment when longing flickers and dies. But much of the rest of the album is meh, like Sheryl Crow without the crackle. 

We Still Go to Rodeos was released April 24, 2020.
Listen to it here.