
The songs on Slow Burn were inspired in part by Rose’s experiences driving between her family’s home bases: the noise and chaos of DC and the quiet, Carolina countryside. Rose would crank music and let her mind drift, making room for the internal monologues and imagined dialogues you might not otherwise dare to hear. There’s a dreaminess in those moments, and they smolder on Slow Burn: memories lose their realities, feelings replace happenings. Slow Burn’s title track, for example, sets soft, ambling drums against Rose’s lyrical repetitions, as she traces those recollections—some lives, some felt— with patient, insistent desire.
The standout “One Last Dance” arrives disguised as a love song, but is actually an ode to a lost friendship, and an imagined dream of one more day like the old days. Reality blurs with feeling again, vocals layer into lullaby, and BADBADNOTGOOD’s bassist Chester Hansen brings that dreamlike quality to a sneaky, cautious but loving undertone. In fact most of the songs on Slow Burn have that stealthy, shadowed feel, like they’re arriving on tiptoe: intimate but a little dangerous, tender but a little mysterious. As complete and compelling a work as this is, Slow Burn points to a bigger, higher ascent in Baby Rose’s future. “I feel boundless,” says Rose. “It’s one thing carrying the weight of the emotion I’m going to bring as a vocalist and lyricist, but now I feel like I’m the head on a body with all these players and artists and other limbs. I’m in love with that process. When you have the right energy and the right synergy,” she says, “all that’s left is to trust yourself.”
TRACK LISTING
1. On My Mind
2. Slow Burn
3. Caroline Feat. Mereba
4. Weekness
5. It’s Alright
6. One Last Dance