Caitlin Mae’s single “House Sitting” slid into earshot less like a shiny Nashville calling card and more like finding a faded letter tucked inside a secondhand book. It’s labelled country, and the soft rock structure gives it shape, but the atmosphere? That’s pure, unadulterated heartache, distilled. Mae possesses one of those voices – technically brilliant, sure, but more importantly, emotionally transparent. You hear the catch, the weary knowledge of someone who knows the closing credits are rolling.
The central idea, this “house sitting” in the ruins of love, is deceptively simple yet cuts deep. It paints that awful picture of relationship decay: vibrancy draining away, passion cooling to room temperature. It put me in mind, oddly, of the faded tapestries you see in drafty old castles – once brilliant, now just muted threads hinting at former glory. Mae sings of this space, once shared, now just hollow rooms echoing silence, not fondness. Feeling like an outsider in your own life is a special kind of lonely.
There’s a particularly bruising quality to the lyrics about realizing your place was never solid, just… provisional. Temporary. Like you were only ever pencilled in. That sense of replacement, of being quietly ushered out while someone else gets handed the keys, avoids melodrama thanks to Mae’s measured delivery. The regret isn’t a storm; it’s a low, persistent drizzle, soaking everything. Even clinging to broken memories feels less like nostalgia and more like a desperate need for any kind of mooring, however fractured.
It doesn’t tidy itself up neatly. “House Sitting” leaves you lingering in that hollowed-out feeling, the uncomfortable quiet after the shouting stops. The country roots provide the honesty, the soft rock polish keeps it from falling apart, but it’s Mae’s voice that makes you believe in the emptiness.
Is it worse to mourn the love you lost, or to suspect it was never truly built to last anyway?
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