An evening with Roselit Bone
Apocalyptic cowboy music
When asking Charlotte McCaslin to
describe Roselit Bone's new record, Crisis
Actor, with one word, she responds, "fucked."
After several years of touring the US,
the band has gone from relative unknowns to somewhat cult status, having
perfected an infectious and powerful live show that falls somewhere between a
demented Roy Orbison and an angelic Gun Club. Their anthems of loneliness,
alienation, and triumph have allowed them to artfully navigate through a
cluttered underground scene, captivating audiences and transfixing crowds in a
nightly conversion ritual. On
their newest release, they paint a picture of a world that is truly "fucked," lacing vignettes of systemic violence, sexual
confusion, and class warfare with a wry, suicidal humor straight from the gut
of America. "I didn't see the ascendancy of fascism as anything new here, so my
freshest feelings of disgust were toward anyone who could point their finger in
one direction and walk away with a smirk on their face." Charlotte admits. When asked how the punk
influence fits in, she smiles, "I don't align with any genre. For me, the
essence of punk is in dealing unflinchingly with the misery and violence of
lower-class city life, coming out alive, and wearing your scars proudly."
Crisis
Actor's birth can be traced back to Charlotte's
time growing up in Southern California's Orange County; a place where economic
exploitation and casual discrimination were intertwined and buried amid a sea
of sunshine and palm trees. Eventually she found punk, idolizing Los Angeles bands like X
and The Cramps. Nights were spent traveling to the Inland Empire (Riverside
County) to witness countless shows at the Showcase, which at times would break
out into bloodbaths. It was punks on punks, cops on punks. "There was always a threat of violence from
skinheads, tweakers, gangs, or the cops there." At twenty-one, Charlotte had
seen enough and ditched Southern California for the more insular Pacific
Northwest, picking Portland's grayed out radius as a welcome landing spot. "Ten
years ago, it was cheap and a good place to strike out on your own," she notes.
By the time she met guitarist Victor Franco and drummer Ben Dahmes, the nucleus
of Roselit Bone was born.
Fast
forward seven years and two full length records later, Roselit Bone entered
Supernatural Sound (Oregon City, OR) to begin tracking Crisis Actor. Charlotte would oversee the majority of the writing
and production. The sessions were long, but after only a few days, the seven
piece band had recorded the bulk of the record live. It was a valiant effort to
capture the manic energy of their live set which previous records had yet to
fully realize. Yet by the time Noah Georgeson (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom)
was tapped to mix the album, Charlotte was immersed in something even more
profound - the beginning of her gender transition. "There are echoes of what
was to come in the lyrics of this record. I spent hours tracking the vocals on
the title track, getting deeper with each take into the headspace of the toxic,
angry, sexually confused person I inhabit on that song. At the end of it I was
totally drained and felt an amplification of the anxiety that I came to
recognize as gender dysphoria." And with such a revelation, there follows a
sense of distraction that can accompany it, one that Charlotte is quick to
point out. "I don't think people should see this album much through the lens of
my transition, as it was written before I knew what was going on."
Beyond Crisis Actor's self deprecation and
societal condemnation, there's a sweeter side that lies just beneath a
half-cocked smirk. When singing, "I hate myself and I'm at war with the world around
me" on "I Pissed The Bed," the tension between honesty and illusion is
forthcoming, and ultimately points out the beauty and ugliness that Charlotte
aims to document. "Sometimes I'm speaking from the
most despicable part of myself, sometimes I'm trying to find common cause with
people who would want me dead, sometimes I'm just telling funny stories from
tour," she freely admits. While "Proving Grounds" sends an anthemic howl across the bombed out desert with "I was
glad to have been sterilized / but now I'm pissing blood," "Laughlin, NV"
blares with a tweaked out country swing that only a group of fearless misfits
could attain, capsized by "Every hand's a winner / until we're coming down / On
the Colorado River / slow dancing in the loser's lounge." It's like a pair of forgotten
moments from Bukowski's Ham on Rye. In
fact, it was Bukowski who once wrote, "The free soul is rare, but you know
when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near
or with them." If there is anything that encapsulates Roselit Bone, it
must be this.
Crisis
Actor's
arrangements are vast and ambitious, revealing a sonic, panoramic landscape
where street urchins, psychedelic vaqueros, and drunken outlaws ride painted
horses through a savage, dystopian, yet ultimately hopeful, punk rock future.
It's a record of layers, revealing itself more fully with each listen.
Charlotte admits, "there's a little bit of myself in every character," and it's
precisely those characters that bring to life the record's vision of a broken
society straight from the American underbelly, one that the sprawling seven
piece outfit so vividly mimics on stage. But in the end, it's hard not to
believe that this record lies somewhere within Charlotte herself, an artist on
the cusp of rebirth, one that can only be described as beautifully as "fucked."
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GET LOUD
- Bandcamp:
- https://roselitbone.bandcamp.com/
- Website:
- http://www.roselitbone.com/