ROMAN - So Ghost?

If the title was really meant to be a question, the

answer is: yes.

It really is Roman's ghost that shows up in

2005, taking the place of the measured singer behind a decent

debut two years earlier.

With Halloween approaching - a holiday dangerously

fitting for the album's title - an impertinent question comes to mind: while working on

"So Ghost?", was Roman thinking more about treats, or about the trick?

Let's be honest: if we had to make do with a handful of gems to

start over, sparing us the awkwardness of writing about his, and

unfortunately since this is now our job, this new chore, we'd gladly take a little trip to the

corner tobacco shop, well stocked with licorice and lollipops, just to

reach our goal. If instead this is all a joke, well, we can't

even count it among the successful, or entertaining, ones.

A promising young German artist,

Roman debuted in 2003 with "5 Minutes To Match", an album of

deep poptronic atmospheres that winked now at Depeche Mode, now at Japan, thanks to a baritone voice

paired with a certain eighties romanticism. Not bad: a few naive touches, sure, but

also clear signs of talent still to be developed.

Whether it was the

fairly positive reviews, or excessive confidence in his own vocal and

compositional gifts, the fact remains that the young man clamorously fumbles his second album,

managing to pack into just 33 minutes an out-of-the-ordinary pretentiousness,

paired with flat, often predictable songwriting. It's not clear

which direction our man wants to take, torn as he is between yearnings for

charts and clumsy pop-flavored experiments. All of it dressed up with a

production that wants to come across as raw, but which simply sounds

sloppy and ill-executed.

Few ideas, and confused ones at that, played out

under the banner of an eclecticism that doesn't suit someone unable to pull together

even the handful of half-decent ideas he has, let alone in a convincing way. And yet the album doesn't

even start out in the worst possible fashion: if "Little Baby" is meant as a tribute

to Robert Palmer in bank-clerk mode, the one who years ago, with his gleaming,

toothy grin, would occasionally land a superhit (though we have our doubts),

at least this time the reference lands unscathed.

Perhaps convinced he'd

already bewitched us with an opening track that, alas, concentrates half of the

presentable material on the whole record, Roman then tries his hand, on the following "Skiver", at

what's supposed to be a showcase of virtuoso vocalizing over syncopated pop.

Too bad the result bears an alarming resemblance to a soundcheck for levels and

microphone, so puffed up that it fails to catch the drift of the slapdash

near-digital arrangements backing it: the embarrassment is palpable, with Patrick Wolf on another planet entirely.

We could linger over some ungenerous descriptions of a

musician who, we hope, has simply missed the mark this time: it's a shame,

but it happens sometimes. But know that it's hard to do worse than on “Cuddle For A

Corpse” (help, the corpse theme strikes again!), perhaps a demo lifted wholesale

from Robbie Williams' rejects, which the devils would surely have preferred

to find already taken, rather than hear the insipid warbling of “Devils Call”, with

the final hope that the unfortunate woman to whom the (for us) distressing

sentimentality of “I Found Love” is being shouted never gets wind of it, perhaps because

she's busy listening to the Smiths

originals, rather than their sorry parody.

So then: do you

fall into the category of contrarians? Does the soul of Doubting Thomas dwell in you?

Are you among those who, upon reading a scathing review, grow curious and

rush to buy the CD in no time at all, just for the perverse pleasure

of calling the writer incompetent? Be our guest. But don't say we

didn't warn you.

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30/04/2026