by David Wilikofsky
Every so often, an album comes along announcing the arrival of a huge new talent. It’s the kind of work that demands your attention, but also rewards it. As I listened to The TrashCannon Album for the first time last week, it was clear this is one of those albums. It’s been playing on repeat in my apartment for the past week, and I don’t anticipate that stopping any time soon.
Cannon’s music is country through and through. Musically, the songs on the album are equal parts rockabilly and twang. She has described the release as a concept album about “all the trashiest parts of my life”, but I’m not sure that I entirely agree with that description. Cannon touches on heavy themes such as incarceration (“Mama’s A Hairdresser”), sexism (“Dumb Blonde”), and alcoholism (“Drink Enough”), but if I were to say the album was “about” anything it would be the complexities of living in our current day and age. At its best, the album interrogates what it means to live in America today with empathy and humor.
At times I can hear shades of the new country vanguard in Cannon’s writing (Brandy Clark, Kasey Musgraves, and Shane McAnally all come to mind), but at others I’m reminded of Rachel Bloom and Adam Schlesinger’s work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The songs on that show were humorous while still being emotionally resonant, which is exactly the tightrope Cannon walks with aplomb. Take opener “Going For The Bronze”, the catchiest ode to underachieving I’ve ever heard. The characters who populate the song have masters degrees but work at Starbucks and Applebees because the market crashed and they need a dental plan. They steer into the curve; as the chorus goes, “I’m going for the bronze / I’m gonna knock in the park / Because I’m not trying to get too far ahead”. It’s funny, but it’s also true. This is the reality for large swaths of America today. Other tracks are lighter; “Toolbag”, a song about the strong women who facilitate the success of their partners, is filled to the brim with tool double entendres. Each song on the album displays the same craftsmanship as these two, and there’s not a skippable track in the bunch.
The album is populated with snapshots of small town America, but it’s not the oft reductive stereotypes found in so much mainstream country music (luckily there’s not a river or truck to be found). Cannon’s songs have a lived in quality, populated by ex-boyfriends, hairdressers and bartenders. These are pieces of Cannon’s life (for instance, in actuality she is, among other things, a hairdresser and maintains a salon in Durango, Colorado) and it shows. Rarely do albums come along this authentic and downright fun. I expect to hear a lot more from Caitlin Cannon, but until then I’ll be playing this record.