I loved this album, but then in high school, I always had a strong fascination with the melancholy girls. You know the girls. Like Alice in your math class with the dark brown hair and red cheeks who you saw crying in the hallway last week after she broke up with Glenn. And it was, like, sad, you know? Because they weren’t just a high school couple. They seemed like, desperately in love. And so you sit there when you’re supposed to be doing that sheet of word problems and stare at Alice because she’s so pretty and her secondhand clothes are so much nicer than anything you’ve ever found at the Salvation Army and you kind of cry a bit when she gets up on stage at the school’s talent night and plays her green acoustic guitar and sings a song about Glenn and how much she loved him. I love Rose Melberg for the same reasons I loved girls like Alice in high school. Because she is talented, and gorgeous, and oh so sad. And since I’ll hopefully never be sad enough myself to write songs this great, I’ll listen to this album whenever I feel like hurting vicariously.
–jennifer (Double Agent)