Caroline Says Record Review

As expansive as it is intimate, the sophomore album from Caroline Says broods nine tracks awash in husky, twilight blues. Atop a rich mood board of characters at their wits' ends, the sighing vocals of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Caroline Sallee never reach above a mumble, but a sleepy desperation quavers throughout her songs. In the same way that 2014's 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong offered a quietly unpredictable swirl of genres – hints of bossa nova, of pure folk – No Fool also veers off the well-worn path. Inspired by 1971 Al Pacino film The Panic in Needle Park, "A Good Thief Steals Clean" skews atmospheric and hypnotic, a drum machine unsettling the ambience. "You used to spend most nights passing time on whatever you could find," Sallee murmurs. "Black Hole" unfolds eerie, fingerpicked folk, a melancholic sigh of a song, while the poppier "Cool Jerk" jangles with the sheen of Brooklyn guitar rock. Closer "Lone Star Tall Boy" begins with cooing vocals before tapering off into a cinematic, three-and-a-half-minute instrumental, its pitter-patter flitting percussion, lithe guitar lines, pedal steel twang, and a whispering outro.