Caroline Rose. Photo credit: Seannie Bryan
Fresh off a run supporting Modest Mouse, Caroline Rose is gearing up for their first-ever Australian shows, with the newly released, Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, in tow. Built on instinct, absurdist humour and a deep well of feeling, the record is the first release on their own label, SUCK Records, and finds Rose embracing the dumb, the strange and the theatrical. Ahead of their debut Sydney and Melbourne shows, Caroline spoke with Kade about the energy between a band and a crowd, finally putting “Yip Yip Yow” on a record, learning to trust producer John Congleton, and chasing the one song that will outlive them.
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Kade: Well, to start us off, how are you doing today? How has touring been treating you?
Caroline: It's going well so far. I mean, we're doing an opening tour for Modest Mouse. And then right after this, I do a bunch of press and in stores in Europe and the UK. Then I have my first Australia shows, so it's busy, but good.
Kade: Talking about the shows you've been playing with Modest Mouse, after you played those really intimate shows at the small independent venues over the summer, how has that experience differed, playing just two very different types of venues?
Caroline: It's just two different experiences. I play the bigger venues with my band and stuff, and it has its benefits. It usually sounds better, and it's always fun playing for bigger audiences. But the small, intimate shows, you just get a different feeling. It's like eating a different meal or something. It's like you feel differently when you interact with the crowd. There's, certain types of music that sounds better in smaller rooms and it just has that kind of intimacy. It's kind of nice for solo shows.
Kade: Have you felt that with the more intimate shows that it also feels different from a crowd perspective as well?
Caroline: Yeah, definitely. I think there's like a symbiotic relationship between the audience and the people on the stage. We feed off of one another, and it really dictates the type of show that you're going to get based on, how the audience interacts with the music and interacts with the band and the mood of the band. So, it's a really intense energy. And sometimes I am amazed by how different it can feel. It could be the same club, but Tuesday is different from Wednesday, dramatically different. And I don't really understand why, but the energy totally changes the show. It's magic. It's magic.
Kade: I've heard similar sentiments from some artists before, with how you mentioned the symbiotic relationship. When you have a crowd that isn't giving you as much energy or isn't on the same wavelength as you, what are the things that you do to try and bring the energy up?
Caroline: I have my little tools that I use, but normally if I'm doing my job well, people kind of come around or it just changes the nature of the show and I'll play different songs. Sometimes my energy will be different and that's just what it is. And I think there's something cool about that. Like what you get is what you get and you don't get upset. [pointing out the Mannequin Pussy shirt] I have that shirt by the way.
Kade: Oh yeah, I saw it in your interview on the NPR.
Caroline: Yeah, yeah.
Kade: Yeah, they came to Australia a couple of years ago, I got it. So that was pretty cool.
Caroline: Missy's like the best, nicest, coolest person.
Kade: And then they're touring with Wednesday as well at the moment, which I'm very jealous of that we don't get that joint headline tour.
Caroline: I know I got to I got to catch one of the shows.
Kade: Talking more about your own shows. One thing I wanted to ask about was in your Reddit, Ask Me Anything, you spoke about how you live having some songs only exist in a live setting. So, with Yip Yip Yow existing as a live only song for such an extended period of time, what made it feel right to finally put it onto a record?
Caroline: I wasn't planning on doing that, but it just fit with this album that I was making. I just had these songs where it just felt like a perfect addition to it. And I hadn't really found a place on an album before that. I was fine with it living only live. I have other songs that only live live. And it'll probably stay that way. I think it's kind of fun to try out songs on an audience and some things just sound and feel better live. Then when you go into the studio, like I had that problem with Yip Yip Yow, where it's a bit of a stupid song. I mean, in the best way, it's just a stupid, kind of nonsensical song. It needed to sound that way. It needed it to sound dense, like a bunch of lunks playing it. And I don't think any of the recordings had sounded like that, which is why it sounded better live. I had that kind of frenetic energy. But then I worked with this great producer who just nailed it, he just knew what to do with it and it was great. Bless
Kade: Speaking, about a producer, you’re talking about John [Congleton], right?
Caroline: Yeah.
Kade: I did want to ask about that as well, because I wanted to ask if working with him on this album brought something else out in the songs that you might not have been able to find by yourself.
Caroline: Yeah, well, he made a lot of choices that I wouldn't have made by myself. And he's a wild man. I think that we have a really overlapping sense of humour and a lot of the bands that I am interested in, he likes the style that I was trying to capture for this. He just knew right away what to do and then would give me albums to listen to and I'd be like, this is perfect. Yeah, you got it. He's really good at making decisions on the fly. Like some of the decisions that he made, I was like, really? You're gonna have this like Joe Satriani guitar on this song? It sounds weird. Like it sounds out of place. But then he's like, just sit with it. And you know, a couple weeks goes by and by the end of it, I'm like, okay, I actually kind of like it. So, I think that's part of trusting somebody in the studio. It's kind of hard to just hand that over to somebody. But when it's the right person, it makes you a better artist, ultimately, learning how to trust someone.
Kade: Talking more about the album, in that NPR interview, you were talking a little bit about where the name [for the album] came from, because I believe it was described as evocative at the time. I love the title, I think it's really cool. How did those two ideas, the gentling a horse and the Walt Whitman Mall, end up clicking together?
Caroline: Well, you know, I was talking to somebody, I think I was talking to somebody who lives in Chile and we were doing an interview, and I told her about what the title means to me and stuff. And she was like, that's really interesting. I thought it was going to be something different. And I was like, what do you what did you think? And she said that she thought of these images of the cowboy and the horse and a mall named after a poet. They kind of were two different symbols of like an old version of American culture and a new version of American culture. That's like kind of what people think of today, like malls and absurdity. I don't know. Stuff like fast food and 12 lane highways and overconsumption. I thought that that was such an interesting way to put it that I'm like, that's actually better. So, I'm just using hers now [laughs].
But I do like the two images together they're kind of funny. There's a humour to it but there's also this kind of sadness to it. Or maybe not sadness but there's a depth of emotion that I think is really interesting. I don't know if you've seen the album cover but the guy who does these paintings, his name's Jordan Sullivan, he makes these paintings of like modern American scenes, and they're all ridiculous. They're like over the top and maximalist and absurd. And I thought that they perfectly captured the energy of what I was going for, which was like one part absurdist humour, dark comedy, and one part a deep well of feeling, which obviously there's emotion there. So, I think that kind of gets it across. It's kind of a hard thing to describe in a handful of sentences. So, I hope I hope that people have their own interpretations of what it what it means to them.
Kade: Do you feel like you like the fact that there are different ways that people can interpret both the artwork and the title and even the themes of the project?
Caroline: Yeah, and I think that that's so cool. You know, I did an interview with somebody from Japan, and they had a whole different interpretation of it. And because, you know, I was talking about my perspective of growing up and living in the US and I grew up road tripping with my family. So, we'd see all these roadside attractions and this really kitschy side of America with all this Americana imagery of cowboys and bucolic farms and stuff, kind of like a caricature almost. And that stuff has always fascinated me through this lens of like a theme park. Feels like we're living in a theme park. And then I, grow up, I'm an adult now, and it still feels like that, except it feels more like one of those like deranged theme parks that's like kind of fucking haunted and like you could be stabbed at any moment. It feels more like that. But I love that stuff. I feel like we're like living in an episode of Black Mirror constantly.
But what I find really interesting is, I come from this “oh, this is an American problem”, which obviously it is, but people around the world have their own version of this. And people are really the same everywhere. We have the same needs and the same desires and the same issues that we struggle with, like bad politics and corruption and people abusing their power. It's a worldwide issue. So, I love hearing how people interpret this with their own lives and their own interests and their own governments and their own cultures, because it really is like a different version of the same problems.
Kade: That was really awesome, hearing about that. Sorry, I was getting lost a little bit in your description of that. That was really awesome.
Caroline: Thank you.
Kade: In some of the press notes, the album was described as being built through humour and layering and instinct rather than a polish, if you will. In one of the other interviews that I read, you described some songs like a chunky sculpture and chiselling it into shape, which I really liked. I wanted to ask, how much of this project was the chiselling and how much of it was like raw instinct?
Caroline: I feel like this one was all raw instinct because it happens so fast. John works so fast. It was kind of just like there were two other players besides me. John did a lot of the drum machine stuff. But it would mostly be I really want this to sound like some teenagers in Kansas who've never played their instruments before and they're getting together for the first time and don't know what they're doing. Then they're like, yeah, okay. So, they'll go in there and John will make it sound all good. He'll swap things around or he's like, oh, we should try the rototoms or whatever. He kind of makes it all sound interesting. Then he'll throw it, he'll be like, it needs a synth bass or whatever. Then somebody will play a synth bass part. But it all happens so quickly and sort of seamlessly. If something wasn't working, usually I'd just beat my head against the wall and kick and scream and then I'll be like, play dumber. So then they would, and then it would sound better. So, I'd say it's more like a spontaneous, just do the thing and then embrace the thing. And that is what it is, which is very interesting.
Kade: Another thing that I wanted to ask about also on the creative side of things was about your writing. Going back to that Reddit AMA that I mentioned earlier. It was a couple of years ago now, but at the time you mentioned that you write in cycles due to having a lack of time on tour. Now you've been on the road so much and with the new record, has that changed since then or is it still the same?
Caroline: It has always been like that for me, even if I'm not really on the road. Maybe it's a seasonal thing, but I remember it being like that even when I was younger. When the seasons change or something, there's more of a time of reflection and then there's a season where I'm like, I just want to consume everything and read all the books and watch all the movies and listen to every record and learn as much about life as possible. Then there's usually a lot of songs that come after that. But I found that when I break that cycle, it doesn't work well. Like my songs suck and I suck as a person. I just don't think you should go with the natural flow. Sometimes people can write it all time, all times a day and whatever. I can only write well when I feel like my bucket is full. I got to live or else it's boring.
Kade: Beyond writing, I really wanted to ask about the visual side of things for this project because I've loved the recent music videos that you've done for the singles. I wanted to ask what is your inspiration for this? I know it's a bit of a basic question, but there's a lot of creative juices flowing.
Caroline: I mean, I feel like my inspiration, it's so interesting because people are always like, your albums sound so different. And I'm like, they all kind of come from the same bucket of inspiration. Things that I was inspired by growing up and music that I listened to growing up and the stuff that I listen to now. I just feel it's all kind of variations of the same things. So, usually I'll just have a whole mood board of images and depending on who I'm working with, I'll just show them the same thing and ask how would you interpret this? Or, you know, what is inspiring you? If it's a person that I collaborate well with, they'll be like, oh, I get it immediately. Luckily, everybody I've worked with so far have all just been so good. Just interpreted it in a way that I was like, oh yeah, you nailed it. Like my friend T, we've now collaborated. I mean, we just met like maybe four months ago and became kind of instant friends because we're interested in the same bizarre shit. It's really fun working with people like that because it changes the aesthetic of the whole project. We're both into macabre creepy stuff and then, like tiki bars and old bodybuilder magazines and stuff. Just these kind of odd off kilter things, blow up dolls and things like that. It's just bizarre and fascinating things. Once it kind of does that, I'm like, oh, let's do more. I have so many different sides to me. I think it really just depends on how I'm feeling and I'm feeling weird. I'm feeling like flexing my weirder interests on this album. It's fun.
Kade: Then looking towards the future, you're coming to Australia for the first time, right?
Caroline: Yeah, I'm so excited.
Kade: We're very excited to have you. I know you've spoken in the past about designing your own lighting and growing up and loving theatre. So, what can people expect, I guess, from seeing you perform live?
Caroline: Man. Well, I will be solo. It's turns out it’s really hard to get to Australia with the whole rig.
Kade: Yeah, we're a long way away from everyone else [laughs].
Caroline: It's very far. Yeah. I was supposed to go back in 2020 and the pandemic just kept pushing everything back and then I was like, I give up. But I think just given the creative limitations of what I can bring with me, I would say don't expect anything and then be surprised by what you get. I did all the solo touring last year and then a lot of the year before that as well. It's one of my favourite things to do, if not my favourite thing to do. If you can play, if you can put on a good solo show, you can really do any type of show. So, I wouldn't say that it's going to be the most laser light show of performances, but it will be special. And I just know it's going to be good. Not to toot my own horn, but it's going to be good. I'm just so excited to finally get there. It's been a long time. It's long overdue and no more pandemics.
Kade: Then one final question just to wrap things up. The new album is a very independent record and going forward, I wanted to ask what is something you still want to crack creatively that you haven't quite yet?
Caroline: There's a lot of things I want to crack creatively. I think if I could make like one song that will outlive me. I'll be happy when I die.
Kade: What's to say you already haven't made that song?
Caroline: I don't know. See, I don't know. But you know, I always think of this story. Do you know the artist Hokusai? He was a Japanese woodcut artist. I heard this thing that I think about all the time. He said on his deathbed if I could just make one great piece of art before I die, then I could be a true artist. You know, and I totally understand that because when you're making stuff, it feels so amazing in the process of writing it. But then as soon as it's done and it's out, it's like, it lost something there. I don't know what that process is. It's kind of a mystery to me, but you know, maybe I've already done it and I don't know. But yeah, I think I would love to feel the satisfaction while I'm alive.
Kade: Yeah, not like Van Gogh or something like that.
Caroline: No, tragically, never knew. Never knew how great he was.
Kade: Yeah. Anyway, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. I know you're at a show right now. So, thanks so much for taking time out of your night.
Caroline: Thank you. Thank you.
Don’t miss Caroline Rose on tour in Australia later this month:
Sydney, NSW: Thursday, November 26, 2026 – The Lansdowne Hotel (with support from Jane Dire)
Melbourne, VIC: Friday, November 27, 2026 – Smith St Hotel (with support from Matahara)
Listen to Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall by Caroline Rose.