Straight out of a Sacramento high school, Rose Melberg entered the indiepop 7-inch scene in 1992 with her first of many successful bands, Tiger Trap. Crunchy guitars and punk attitudes couldn’t hide Rose’s velvet voice and painfully-honest lyrics, and the all-girl foursome quickly became stars of a burgeoning indiepop/punk movement centered around Olympia, WA, and record labels like K and Kill Rock Stars. Too good to last, Tiger Trap split after their second U.S. tour, leaving one classic album and an EP on K Records. Wondrously prolific, Rose quickly teamed with uber-fan Jen Sbragia to form the The Softies, possibly her best-known project. With just two guitars and two angelic voices, from 1994 to 2001 The Softies debuted with a 7-inch and mini-LP on the wonderful Slumberland Records, toured the U.S. five times (once with Elliott Smith), released three amazing albums on K Records, and recorded several singles and compilation tracks.
At the same time, Rose somehow managed to front Go Sailor, who collected their sold-out and sought-after pop singles on Lookout! Records in 1997, and had two songs featured in the campy film, But I’m a Cheerleader. Never stopping, Rose also played drums on two albums with Gaze and recorded various duets and solo tracks while on tour. Those stray tracks were compiled on Portola, released by Double Agent Records in 1998. All Music Guide gave it four stars and declared: “Even in light of the uniform brilliance of Rose Melberg’s past work with Tiger Trap and the Softies, her solo debut is still revelatory — never before has her voice been so disarmingly honest and vulnerable … Portola is a small miracle.”
After giving us an avalanche of mellifluous albums to treasure, Rose kept quiet for five years while she started a family on a small Canadian lakeside town. In 2006, she came back with her solo masterpiece. Rose’s maturity is immediate on Cast Away the Clouds — long after graduating from Indiepop University, she emerged as a developed singer/songwriter akin to Nick Drake, Tracey Thorn, Elliott Smith, and Isobel Campbell (of Belle & Sebastian). With lyrics like a deeply personal journal, Cast Away the Clouds is an album Rose made for herself. |
