Caroline Rose is coming back to Cat's Cradle, with a new album and a new label in tow

Four years after their last Carrboro stop, Rose brings the Uncle Carol's World of Fun Tour to Cat's Cradle on Sunday, March 28.

The last time Caroline Rose played Carrboro, it was a Sunday night in April 2023, Hammydown opened, and the songs were from The Art of Forgetting, the record they were touring that spring. Nearly four years on, Rose is booked into the same room on another Sunday: Cat's Cradle, Sunday, March 28, 2027, an 8 p.m. show on what the club's calendar calls the Uncle Carol's World of Fun Tour.

The date was announced Oct. 20 and tickets are on sale through eTix, the Cradle's ticketing partner. The main room holds about 750, which for an artist with Rose's following on the indie circuit is a comfortable fit rather than a squeeze. Still, a Sunday show five months out is the kind of thing people mean to buy and then forget about. Don't.

What has changed since 2023 is a lot. A week ago, on Oct. 23, Rose released Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, and it is the first record on SUCK, the label Rose started for themself. The album carries the single "Chow Mein" and "Yip Yip Yow," a longtime fan favorite. Rose's team describes it as pairing "sharply observed, memoiristic songwriting with expansive guitar textures," and NPR's World Cafe framed it as the record where Rose threw out the rulebook.

A Sunday show five months out is the kind of thing people mean to buy and then forget about. Don't.

That fits the arc. The move to their own imprint puts the decisions, and the risk, with the artist. When Pollstar reported the album announcement in August, it also noted Rose was heading out as support for Modest Mouse this fall, which means by the time the spring headline run reaches the Triangle, these songs will have had months on the road to settle in.

So what to expect on March 28? The tour name suggests Rose is leaning into the theatrical, funhouse side of their live show, though the details of the production have not been announced. Expect the new record to carry the night; whether the 2023 material gets a look-in is anyone's guess until the setlists start coming back from the early dates.

Cat's Cradle remains the obvious room for this. It is where Rose played last time, it is where a lot of the Triangle's indie audience has seen artists grow from one tour to the next, and a 750-cap room is big enough to feel like an event and small enough to feel like a party. Support has not been announced.

Rose has been gone from Carrboro long enough that a new crop of fans has found them in the meantime. Some of them will be at the Cradle for the first time on March 28. The rest of us will be the ones telling them how good the last one was.

Sources: Cat's Cradle — Caroline Rose (catscradle.com); Cat's Cradle — Events calendar (catscradle.com); NPR World Cafe — How Caroline Rose threw out the rulebook on their latest album (npr.org); Pollstar — Caroline Rose Announces New Album, Adds Fall Appearances (news.pollstar.com); American Songwriter — Caroline Rose announces 2023 tour (editorial.americansongwriter.com); eTix — Caroline Rose, Uncle Carol's World of Fun Tour, Cat's Cradle (etix.com)