Caitlin Rose and Andrew Combs

With a voice equal parts honeyed and world-weary, Caitlin Rose sings self-aware songs of self- destruction, documenting proclivity and impulse control, bad habits in life and in romantic pursuits. Her albums brim with incisive, well-observed tracks full of searching vulnerability, ruminating on the things done to us and the various coping mechanisms and behaviors we adopt to feel in control in their wake. A standout staple of Nashville’s rock scene, Rose is “witty, brilliant company” (Pitchfork) and a “promisingly wry lyricist” (The Guardian) with a “wily and impressive blend of melancholy and cheek.” (New York Times) On CAZIMI, Rose boldly dismisses the preconceived idea of what a “Caitlin Rose Album” should be. Instead, she skips across genres, combining new wave influences like Elvis Costello and Magnetic Fields with the pop stylings of Katrina and the Waves and the melancholy Americana of David Berman and Silver Jews alike into one cohesive mix-tape. But rather than disjointed parts, these songs form a cohesive, robust whole, reflecting the multifaceted complexity of a fully-realized person—even if things had to be pulled apart and put back together a few times to get there.

Though born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Nashville-based singer-songwriter and artist Andrew Combs can’t say for certain he identifies with any one place in particular. Through years of drawing on ethereal and visceral beauty wherever he can find it, his work is more accurately a measured synthesis of a wide array of “places”: the literal and the figurative, those he has been to and others he has yet to see. His newest full-length album, Sundays (out August 19, 2022), is reflective of those varied places that inform Combs’ creative work.

Written on the heels of a mental breakdown Combs had at Christmas of 2020—amid the long, monotonous grind of an ongoing global pandemic—Sundays came together in Nashville in early 2021. In the wake of this debilitating psychological crack-up, Combs turned to the practice of transcendental meditation to find balance and to, in the words of surrealist director David Lynch, “catch the big fish”. Alongside his collaborators, Jordan Lehning and Dominic Billet, Combs would go into the studio every Sunday, the goal being to capture a song he had penned the previous week as he plumbed the depths of his own heart and mind.

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