I had a busy week and was unable
to squeeze in a review. Fortunately, I had an album that just got better and
better on each listen.
Disc 1132 is… Sleep Beneath the Willow
Artist: Daniel
Romano
Year of Release: 2011
What’s up with the Cover? Hunters often take a traditional
photo with the harvested animal in front, and the hunter and the gun that
killed it laid across the flank in the foreground. This could be the hipster
musician equivalent. Instead of an elk, you have a couch and instead of posing
behind it, the hipster just lays down. Because…hipsters. Up front is Romano’s
weapon – the guitar.
Also,
the couch tends to not have any bullet holes in it, although this is optional.
How I Came To Know It: My coworker Sam put me on to
Daniel Romano and told me this was the best album to start with.
How It Stacks Up: I have four Daniel Roman albums. I used to
have five, but I got rid of “Modern Pressure” after it failed to impress.
Regardless, it turns out Sam was right; “Sleep Beneath the Willow” is the best
of the bunch.
Ratings: 5 stars
“Sleep Beneath the Willow” is a faithful and
heartfelt re-imagining of old school country music, delivered with reverence for
the original masters and just the right amount of innovation.
Chief among the influences are the Byrds and Gram
Parsons. Romano’s voice sounds like a cross between Gram and Roger McGuinn;
light and airy and full of world-weariness. Romano doesn’t have a massive range
or powerhouse vocals but like Parsons, he sings with conviction and a tone that
grows on you with repeat listens.
By saying this, do I mean to deliver the back-handed
complement “it grows on you”? Yeah, a little, but it grows on you quickly and
is well worth the time invested.
When I first heard this record I played it in the
background at work and I thought it was…just OK. Once I took the time to give
it my full attention, it revealed its true beauty. Part of that is the sneakily
compelling vocal style, but more than anything it is the songwriting.
Romano is a master of melody and song structure, and
a born storyteller. Never straying far from traditional chord progressions of
his heroes, he still manages to make songs that are both fresh and timeless.
“Time Forgot
(To Change My Heart)” opens the album, with a light female chorus of ‘la la
la las’ that reminded me of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To the End of Love”, and for the first few bars you think
that’s where Romano is going. Instead he infuses an old school country moseying
beat and a traditional tale of lost love and revenge. It isn’t just the fusion
of multiple styles that makes the song impressive it is how seamless Romano
manages it.
On “There Are
Lines In My Face” Romano opens with a “just
because…” that made me instantly think of Elvis Presley’s “She Thinks I Still Care” but then
quickly transitions the song in a whole other direction musically. However,
that slight invocation drew my mind to comparisons throughout. On “She Thinks I Still Care” a spurned lover
puts on a brave face, pretending he is over it. On “There Are Lines In My Face” the spurned lover says “just because I
look like I’m doing OK, doesn’t mean that I am.” Romano’s vocals let him down
slightly in the lower end of the register in this song, but he still delivers a
dark and ominous dirge.
The record also shows humour, with “Helen’s Restaurant” delivering
punchlines through a series of incomplete rhymes – each advancing the story:
“A man came into
our town
Swinging his
partner around
He grabbed his
young maid by the wrist
And bent down to
give her a…
Paper to sign right
away
Saying they're
parting their ways
She grabbed her man
by his side and stared right deep in his…
Wallet to get her
fair share.”
Who knew divorce could be so much fun.
The best song on the record is “Louise” a stripped down sea chantey about a lost love, propped up
by the reverberation of organ and a vocal arrangement that starts with just
Romano, and swells with a chorus of background singers, even as your heart
swells at the loss of the narrator:
“Echoes off the
shore of her abandoned dreams
Deep beneath the
foaming floor; the memory of Louise.
She left her ghost
behind to rattle in my sheets
To wake me from the
restless sleep; the memory of Louise
In a sailing boat I
see her, so vivid I could scream
There's a storm on
the horizon and she's far away at sea
And in the dream I
try to tell her as she falls down at her knees
Please do not
forget me, my loving wife Louise”
The interplay of repeating “L” and “W” sounds in “my loving wife Louise” is pure magic, and
sung just as the melody drops down with regret and loss.
Then, right when you think your heart is going to
burst, a violin solo comes in and fills you with a melancholy calm – still sad,
but a different kind of sad. The respite is temporary, as Romano returns after
a couple of bars and climbs you back up onto the cliffs of heartache. I’m a
sucker for a sea chantey to begin with, and this is a great one.
I had originally intended to rate this record just a
little south of perfect based on some weakness in Romano’s vocals and the fact
that the music sounds a lot like artists from the early and mid-seventies.
However, the more I listened the more I realized two things. First, I don’t want
to hear these songs sung by anyone else and second, these songs are the equal
of those early masters and deserve to be acknowledged as such. Five stars.
Best
tracks: All of
them, but here’s a bunch of my favourites: Time Forgot (to Change My Heart),
Hard On You, Louise, Helen’s Restaurant, Paul and Jon, There Are Lines in My
Face, Never a Forced Smile, Nothing. There’s also 3 more that are good.
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