No Fool Like An Old Fool is Caroline Sallee’s second LP under the moniker of Caroline Says. The Austin-via-Alabama singer-songwriter’s debut 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong reflected on loneliness, love, and home after embarking on a West Coast road trip and returning her to her hometown. She recorded it in her parents’ basement. With her new album, Sallee is in a similar state of mind, again after having visited her hometown. She recorded this one in her apartment, careful not to disturb her landlord who lives upstairs. A quiet sensitivity persists, owed in part to those circumstances. Her old-soul perspective is felt in retrospective meditations on small-town life. The sonic atmosphere is thick and gentle like fog. Textured melodies swirl into hypnosis, looping in psychedelic folk and melancholic bossa nova. Sallee might be stuck recording on the bottom floor, but she sounds anything but restrained.
No Fool Like An Old Fool is the sophomore LP moving beyond the surf-folk foundations of her debut, on No Fool... Sallee loosens her earthly tether, allowing her songs to float to ever higher altitudes on clouds of loops, immaculate melodies, and hypnotic harmonies, as she sings about aging, the daily grind, and hometown stymie. Moving to Austin in 2013 gave her a new perspective on her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, which informed the overall vibe of the album. “I think leaving my fairly small hometown and then going back to visit it inspired the feeling I went for on this album. I observed that so many people I knew were content doing basically nothing. Or that they were scared to try to do anything or leave town, like they felt stuck there.”
The first few notes of the Daniel Rossen-esque opener “First Song” dutifully establish the surreal and slightly tragic tone of longing maintained throughout the album. The curiously upturning melodies ride out on a rich ambient texture before “Sweet Home Alabama” cuts the fog with a crackling 60’s soul loop that’s charming and catchy enough to induce a cathartic laugh from the listener. The brightness fades with the frosty and propulsive “A Good Thief Steals Clean,” which features lyrics inspired by the 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, and the idea of being in love with a heroin addict. “I tend to write from the perspectives of characters in dark situations, even though my songs may sound bright,” Sallee notes of her alluring juxtaposition of sunny production and grim lyrics. She employs this dynamic again on “Rip Off,” a frenetically percussive song with lyrics inspired by an NPR story about a young Iraqi man who was killed in an ISIS bombing just before moving to NYC to become a professional dancer. Inspired by Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” the song “Black Hole” features multi-voice harmonies sung from the perspective of 50’s spree killer Charles Starkweather.
Released March 16th, 2018
Written, Performed, and Recorded by:
Caroline Sallee
The Fat Angel Sings 