Caitlin & Brent – Pleasure In The Pain
2020 was supposed to be Caitlin Sherman’s year. The preternaturally talented composer and songwriter had spent years working towards her debut solo album, a dark, haunted meditation on lost love called Death To The Damsel. The album finally arrived at the dawn of the decade: February 14, 2020.
Sherman planned to spend the rest of the year on tour. She’d been working seven days a week, saving up money. “I put all of my belongings in storage, gave up my apartment, re-homed my dog,” Sherman recalls. “I was like, I’m free all of 2020!”
You can guess what happened next. In March, Sherman was en route to perform at South by Southwest. “The whole world shut down while I was on my way there,” says the musician. “It was pretty gnarly.”
For months, Sherman was adrift—unable to focus on her own music because it felt too depressing. Amid this psychic upheaval, she found solace in a budding musical and romantic connection with an acquaintance in the Seattle music scene: Brent Amaker, baritone-voiced frontman for the devilishly fun country-western group Brent Amaker and the Rodeo. In time, this unlikely collaboration yielded Caitlin & Brent, an album that roils with the tumult and joy of finding new love in a time of turmoil.
After they put the relationship on pause for a time, “she asked me if I would consider producing two songs since we weren’t dating anymore,” Amaker recalls, “and that was the beginning of Caitlin & Brent.”
Their debut Caitlin & Brent LP, is out December 12th via Rodeo Corp Ltd. Ahead of the release, they have shared the third single “Pleasure In The Pain.”
They will also play a one night only concert to preview and celebrate the release, happening this Wednesday November 26th at The Triple Door.
They called the project Caitlin & Brent, a wink to Nancy & Lee, the dreamy 1968 pairing of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and to the vintage sensibility they sought to capture. Both drew inspiration from 1960s French pop. And like all the quintessential LP-era duos—Sinatra and Jobim, Nancy & Lee, Simon & Garfunkel—Caitlin & Brent formed an odd couple, their backgrounds as different as oil and water. He idolized Devo and David Bowie; she could hold court on obscure John Barry scores. He was the country singer who fronted a band known for dressing in matching black cowboy outfits, a natural showman more inspired by art-rock icons than the typical country mainstays.
Though the bulk of the album was recorded in 2020, the project gestated while Sherman pursued a master’s degree in film scoring at the Seattle Film Institute and Amaker toured and recorded with his other projects. Before anything was released, “Mirage” found an unlikely audience when it was licensed for the opening credits of the 2024 Magnolia Pictures film Lousy Carter.
The album begins with the recording of the tracks “Silver Screen” and “Pleasure in the Pain,” and as their personal relationship resumed, they funneled their infatuation and romantic angst into writing songs together. Songs which, invariably, chronicled their feelings for each other and veered away from Amaker’s country pedigree, into the realm of orchestral pop.
During the pandemic summer of 2020, they traveled to Portland and tracked the record at the home studio of Jeff Stuart Saltzman. The pair also enlisted the services of veteran composer/orchestrator Andrew Joslyn, who provided string parts remotely, recording them in his own home studio. Joslyn (known for collaborations with Macklemore and Mark Lanegan) wrote the arrangement for “Silver Screen,” with its elaborate melodic flourishes and descending intro, while Sherman, who co-produced the album with Saltzman, arranged strings on all other songs. Each song has around 50 tracks of real strings.
Uncomfortable truths emerge in this music. All love stories are suffused with risk and danger. All lovers are on the run from their own pasts. Here is an album about choosing to plunge into the unknown anyway—about trying to find a kind of, well, pleasure in the pain.
#brentamaker #catiecruel