CAROLINE ROSE: SUSPENDED
IN
DREAMLAND

We catch the stylish and genuine pop-rocker amidst rehearsals for a transatlantic Spring tour in support of The Art of Forgetting, ROSE’s most reinvisioned work yet, released alongside a spectacular and emotional short film of the same name. The expressive talent boasts smart and sensitive answers to some of the Digest’s most revealing questions, including creating new work based on a painful past. Read on for a deep dive into the genre-defying artists' authentic and absorbing world.

BUDS DIGEST: Hi Caroline! Where are you calling from?

CAROLINE ROSE: I'm in Maine right now. We just started production rehearsals, so, it’s been like absolute mayhem, but it just started getting good. 

BD: You're going out on tour soon, right?

CR: Yeah, relatively soon. I learned from the last album to factor in more time for rehearsals because things always come up.

BD: Are you anticipating anything different from your last tour? 

CR: Oh, everything. Everything's different. I designed this light show that I hope works. I am a huge theater geek and I grew up doing theater performances all the time. My parents were always involved. My mom would make the costumes and my dad would make the sets. So we were just like a theater family. And a lot of the lighting techniques that we're using are from the theater. They involve these scrim panels that from the front look like projection and then from behind, it looks invisible. It's this fun idea. It's been keeping me up at night because we haven't tested it yet. 

BD: That's so cool. Is that a big setup to take with you?

CR: Well, that's the clever thing that you have to design. I was an architecture student, so this is so fun for me, but you have to design it in a way that's easy to set up. It's lightweight, it works, it's interesting and beautiful – which is probably the most important thing. And it packs down into a trailer. There's so many things to think about when you're designing a light show and I find it like such a fun puzzle.

BD: Where else is your inspiration coming from, music-wise?

CR: Besides the theater? I feel like I pull inspiration from a lot of different things. Pretty much just like a sponge, which is probably why I'm always changing. Everyone's so shocked that I sound different. I don't know how to be any other way. I'm just, you know, living life and absorbing things. I'm really inspired by certain writers; a lot of southern novelists. In my mind, you can hear a direct relationship to southern storytelling in my lyrics. Just the humor and the candidness is very aligned with the southern gothic writers. I always loved that dark comedy. When you're so low and so depressed and you can still somehow find humor in the situation, I find it a very powerful tool.

BD: Amazing. 

CR: But I pull information from all sorts of stuff. Film. Almodóvar is probably my biggest inspiration from film.

BD: That's interesting that you mentioned him specifically. We were gonna ask about the album cover. It has quite a cool theatrical feel to it. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about?

CR: I was really inspired by this photo that my friend took in my house. It's in this chair that…it was basically like my depression chair where I'd sit and just look out the window. I'd feed my birds from this bird feeder and just watch them. And I’d sit and meditate, read. So it was my special chair. She took this photo that was stunning. It was this difficult to find old Polaroid and it had this quality to it that was very nostalgic looking. I just was really drawn to it. At the same time, when I was coming up with ideas for the album art, I always gravitate towards photos that tell some sort of story. Like, at first glance, it's really eye-catching and usually has something off about it that intrigues me. I was looking at a lot of Gregory Douglass's photos. His work and Nadia Cohen’s. I think it is just so good at that. It immediately captures your eye. But, if you look at the details of the photo, it has a whole narrative behind it. It's like, why are they sitting there with the fork? What does that mean? What is the setting? Is it a high school gym? I love that where you have to work a little harder to put the pieces together, rather than just seeing something pretty.

BD: It's a bit of theater in it.

CR: What if we took my friend Monica's photo and the room was on fire? Because that's kind of how it felt in my head, just trying to make it through the day. And it felt like  I had to kind of fake it, just fake my way through because I was really so, so down. I thought there was an element of humor in it. 

BD: Absolutely. I think all of that comes through. It sounds like you're involved in pretty much everything in your art, which we can totally tell. Obviously through the visual but you also play a lot of different instruments.

CR: I find it all fun. Probably, until recently, I never even called myself a musician, really. Because I like doing all sorts of stuff. If something ever happened where I wasn't able to sing anymore, I would be sad about it because singing is such a big part of my life, but I love so many other things that I would move on and do something else. I like to do a little bit of everything that inspires me. I love this idea where you can kind of create your own little world with stuff, visuals, etc. When somebody enters the room at a show, you really have carte blanche over how you want it to look and feel. I find that it's so interesting. I guess if I have an idea, you know, I'll play the part and track it. But, if I think somebody will be better at it, I'll just ask somebody else. I think most of the time I usually have something in mind and I like to at least try it until I know it doesn't work.

BD: Is there a particular instrument that you liked playing the most on this record?

CR: There's an instrument I love playing the most all the time and that is the bass. It's just the forgotten son, you know? No one ever really listens to the bass unless it's a prominent feature of the song, but you always feel it. You can always tell. If it's a good song, it'll have a good bass line. Hands down. 

BD: Absolutely. 

CR: I think the bass is like the cool uncle. He's kind of in the background. He's not the showy one. He's not loud, he's apolitical but he's just so groovy. And he’s always there. 

BD: Will you have a band with you on this tour?

CR: We have a five piece band and we're currently practicing all the songs. I'm amazed by how good they sound. I usually go hog wild with all their production, techie stuff. I'm like, oh, you're not using your right foot on this song? Let's give you a pedal and let's add something and make you do more. I pretty much force everyone to max out every limb of their body. It usually causes me a lot of stress and headaches for like five days straight. Then I'm like, why do I do this? I'm quitting music forever. I'm gonna work in an ashram. Then it comes together and it works. It's gonna be a good show.

BD: We can’t wait to see it live.

CR: You're catching me on a positive note too because it’s sounding so good. 

BD: Wondering if you use cannabis in your creative writing process at all.

CR: I ‘m more of a mushroom guy myself, but I hit the CBD. 

BD: Well rounded routine.

CR: I have about 5,000 stories of me having a panic attacks smoking weed, which would be hilarious to tell. I need some sort of Hinge app for the perfect weed for me. My number one goal in life is to be a stoner, I find it so cool. Everyone always has such a good time on it too. Everyone's like, oh, it's so creative, I wrote a whole album blazed outta my mind.

BD: Well, luckily you don't need it apparently. We talk to a lot of people about it and they say similar things, anxiety is a common topic. 

CR: I still try though. I still smoke and, you know, grip on for dear life. 

BD: We’ve only had a couple other people talk about mushrooms. Do you tend to use them medicinally or a little more recreationally for your creativity?

CR: I think it's all medicinal. I think even when you're having a bad trip, it's medicinal. For me, I think it's absolutely psychotic that anybody would use it as a party drug. That would send me into like the ninth circle of hell if I was at a party on mushrooms. But, you know, I use mushrooms and acid as tools to be able to see myself. If you strip away all the ego and society and worry, it just helps me reset in a way. When I was writing this album, I did a lot of psychedelics because I was going through so much pain and trying to get to the root of it. And that is a clear cut way of getting directly to the source, because there's nothing to hide behind. I think that's why so many people are terrified to do it because you have to really see yourself and sometimes that can be really ugly.

BD: Absolutely. Very cool sentiment. It's very true and very real of the experience. Curious how you find yourself and your scene as a queer artist working. Do you find a pushback on that? Do you find it opens doors to you?

CR: When I first started my career, I kind of wanted to be a little bit more under the radar – privacy wise. I didn't really come out. I kind of just wanted to be a songwriter. My dream was to have other people cover my songs. Then I realized I did not fit into that. Everyone just assumed I was straight. When I first started it was more folk and country kind of stuff and I was kind of thrust into this world where I was like, oh, I dunno if this is what I want actually. I still love that music and I always will and at some point, will probably make a lot more of it.

BD: Interesting. 

CR: At a certain point I was like, I need to be more of myself, bridge the gap between who I am on and off the stage. I think that opened a lot of doors, ust being more who I actually am in my real life, rather than having a stage persona. The stage persona that I have is really me. Even when I'm, you know, doing all these personification, character-driven storylines, I'm really making a story around myself and I'm just a theater nerd. That's what I do. But now that pretty much everyone knows I'm a big old gay…I mean, I love being gay and I love being a gay artist. The only thing that kind of bugs me sometimes is that it's such an easy box for people to place you in. When it's like “International Women's Day” or something comes around and everybody's making a playlist of all their favorite female artists, it's just a reminder that you're not just a person, you're like this person. Sometimes I just get so much media attention like that, like, oh, you're a woman. Oh, you're queer. I field so many questions about it and see so many of like playlists that people put me on that are queer artists or female artists. It makes me sometimes wonder if people actually see me as a musician or as an artist rather than a queer artist or a female artist or non-binary artist or whatever.

BD: I’m sure that can be annoying. 

CR: But the gays, I love the gays because these are my people and that's not the problem. That's never been the problem. And being open is not the problem.