Caroline Herring: News

May 05, 2008	NEW REVIEWS SECTION
May 05, 2008	Check out all the amazing reviews for Lantana in the new, easier-to-read format of the Press Kit section. We are updating this section every week, so keep checking! The full articles will be added shortly.

April 28, 2008	PASTE Magazine Review
April 28, 2008	Another great review for Lantana! Check out the June issue of PASTE Magazine, or read it right here! <> Lantana [Signature Sounds] <> Indies 1, Nashville 0 <> In the nightmare version of Caroline Herring’s story, she moves to Nashville, signs a big publishing deal and is stuck dumbing down her razor-sharp songwriting for Music Row pod people like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Fortunately, Nashville hasn’t yet sunk its claws into Herring’s immensely empathetic, unprepossessing charm. Exhibit A: “Paper Gown” (about convicted child-murderer Susan Smith) has to be the best example of a songwriter getting inside the head of an unsympathetic real-life protagonist since Steve Earle’s “John Walker’s Blues.” And rather than an immaculately auto-tuned robo-singer, Herring effortlessly plumbs the emotional depths of her songs with her evocative alto. Her delivery, along with Rich Brotherton’s pitch-perfect production, makes this song cycle resonant in more ways than a simple, rootsy singer/songwriter album ought to. Lantana comes on the heels of a five-year break Herring took to get married and start a family, and her music is all the richer for it. Reid Davis

April 10, 2008	Folk Alley Feature
April 10, 2008	New members of Folk Alley receive a free MP3 download from Caroline's LANTANA. What a great reason to join! Go to www.folkalley.com for more information.

April 08, 2008	Great Reviews Keep Rollin' In!
April 08, 2008	Lantana continues to receive wonderful reviews. Here is the newest from Rob Weir of the Valley Advocate in Northampton, MA, April 3: Herring's latest is billed as songs from the "Gothic South," and with big, open guitar and equally big vibrato-laden alto, Herring sings for grown-ups who know that an honest take on life isn't always pretty. Instead of saccharine images of carefree days on daddy's knee, Herring sings of "A childhood worth forgetting/ her twenties damn depresing," and journeys in which "china dolls and worlds collide." Like the late Dave Carter, she finds grace in the plebeian, hypocrisy in the make-nice. "Paper Gown," her retelling of the Susan Smith case, is more tragic than sordid - all in keeping with her no-easy-answers worldview. Toss in memorable melodic hooks and some long overdue country feminism, and Lantana is a headturning effort.

March 13, 2008	AMAZING Austin Chronicle Review of Lantana, SXSW Issue
March 13, 2008	by Margaret Moser: If there were no other songs on Lantana, Caroline Herring's murder ballad "Paper Gown" would still be the tour de force befitting her 2002 win as the Austin Music Awards' Best New Artist. Compositions "Song for Fay," "States of Grace," and "Lay My Burden Down" resonate with Herring's newfound strength, yet it's the devastating simplicity of "Paper Gown" that makes the Rich Brotherton-produced Lantana a career-defining work. "Paper Gown" weaves the tale of Susan Smith, the small-town girl who drowned her two sons in 1994 when her lover rejected her "ready-made family." Herring's brilliance is in recanting the story not as horrific matricide but as the desperate act of a love-blind girl, willing in heart and soul to sacrifice her own flesh and blood. Crafted with timeless elegance and graceful confidence, Caroline Herring's Lantana is the best modern Southern Gothic since Lucinda Williams' Sweet Old World. (Saturday, March 15, St. David's Church, 12mid.)

March 12, 2008	New Article
March 12, 2008	Check out the latest amazing article on Caroline and Lantana. http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_080311_caroline_herring_bri.htm

March 12, 2008	Caroline Herring documentary short on YouTube
March 12, 2008	Check out a short film on Caroline Herring and a behind-the-scenes look at her new album, Lantana. the film was made by Christie Herring, Caroline's sister. You can find it on YouTube under Caroline Herring's Lantana, or go to http://youtube.com/watch?v=cKpaTiYd1jA

March 08, 2008	Caroline at SXSW
March 08, 2008	Caroline will be playing all over Austin during SXSW. Check the Calendar section for full details.

March 01, 2008	Four Star Review from Austin-American Statesman
March 01, 2008	‘Lantana’ (Signature Sounds) The sour certainty of a lover’s infidelity often slips a murder ballad’s trigger. Caroline Herring chooses to measure unconditional love’s disintegration instead. “I confessed that, for love’s sake, I drowned my children in John D. Long Lake,” the Atlanta-based songwriter sings on “Paper Gown.” “They’re with Jesus, looking down at me in this paper gown.” True story: That’s Susan Smith deteriorating underneath the weight of a malevolent Carolina moon. Herring flawlessly reports the grisly material. Presented with corresponding degrees of damnation and empathy, her watertight assessment of the 1994 American tragedy would be a crowning achievement for most artists. On “Lantana” — an embarrassment of riches drawing the straightest line between tradition and transition this side of Adrienne Young — it only rates halfway up the chart. More treasured moments — coming-of-age bookends “Heartbreak Tonight” and “Fair and Tender Ladies,” say, or the closing “Song for Fay” — celebrate women and strength in vulnerability. Every attempt pierces its mark. In fact, few folk albums since Young’s 2005 hallmark “The Art of Virtue” have proved a more thorough success. Herring’s endearing maternal memorandum “Lover Girl” — “Even now we’re dancing, longing for a place to know,” she sings — alone suggests its undying resilience. Now, grab hold of a sturdy beam before spinning “Midnight on the Water.” Talk about the hollow aftermath of faded love. Echoing like a cannon in a cockpit, Herring distills the traditional fiddle tune into arguably the purest representation of heartache since “Goodnight Irene.” “The scenes were there as in a mirror made by the moon upon the water and our love was never stronger,” she gently warbles. “The picture was broken by the waves we left behind at midnight on the water, once upon a time.” Even decades of scratching, of course, won’t remove the deepest stains of regret. Recommended: “Paper Gown,” “Midnight on the Water,” “Song for Fay” — Brian T. Atkinson

February 05, 2008	LANTANA ON SALE ONLINE
February 05, 2008	Go the music/shop sections of this site to learn more about Caroline's new record, Lantana. You may also go to www.signaturesounds.com.