DANIEL ROMANO - Modern Pressure

Graphic artist and poet but above all a songwriter – solo, in collaboration with Julie Doiron and Frederick Squire, or at the helm of Attack In Black – Daniel Romano is a Canadian artist who has been shortlisted multiple times for the Polaris Music Prize and the Juno Award. Together with fellow Canadian Steve Lambke, frontman of Constantines, he also owns the small label that releases his records, You’ve Changed Records, a catalogue that with the new “Modern Pressure” now reaches the milestone of seven full-length releases in as many years. After his country-bluegrass excursions and his implicit, recurring tributes to Gram Parsons and Willie Nelson (though delivered with the same alternative swagger as a Ryan Adams), this new work – recorded alone in a Swedish cabin, where he played everything himself (guitars, keyboards, odd bits and percussive scraps), and then fleshed out together with trusty Kenneth Roy Meehan, already enlisted this year by Alvvays, with strings and horns added only later in a studio in Ontario – digs deeper into the revisionist streak and overall weirdness of the previous "Mosey", opening up new horizons for his omnivorous talent in the direction of a pastoral psychedelia somewhere in Lee Hazlewood territory.

The record is entirely steeped in a cheerfulness that creates a nice contrast with the isolation in which it was born. Romano unleashes relentless energy here and performs with the same admirable brio as Ezra Furman, an artist not so far removed from him on closer inspection. It's the title track that, just a step past the starting line, hurls us into a lush seventies reserve somewhere between soul and psych-folk ornamentation, though it's not only the tenor of the arrangements (which at times recall certain baroque extravagances of Rufus Wainwright) nor the philological precision of the sound that suggests this impression, since Daniel really does seem, by nature (setting aside an outward look that has always leaned toward chameleon-like shapeshifting), like some strange character out of those bygone days. The vividly colored chamber-pop crafted for the occasion doesn't push for any revolution beyond a personal one, a surprising expressive flourish that never pushes into the background, moreover, the qualities of a songwriting style that is classicist, yes, but also quite inspired.

The setting remains emphatic and proud, just enough in its insistence on aesthetic modes with a clear vintage cut. But our man's journey on the time machine, at times geared toward pure contemplation, at times rather rough-and-ready, carries no particular side effects as long as you're willing to happily embrace this kind of magical immersion. Darting about and cartoonish like a sprite, Romano the performer entertains with the slightly ambiguous charm of very early Bowie ("When I Learned Your Name") and flaunts an all-around lightness that is actually far less frivolous than its playful inflections might suggest, even in its most blatantly androgynous moments ("Sucking The Old World Dry"). In the episodes less inclined toward exaggeration, on the other hand, Daniel manages to confirm himself as a chronicler of the marginal and the everyday with a knack for happy romanticism, sentimental but not sentimentalist, nostalgic but careful not to slip up because of the very same enchantments he has sketched out.

Irreducibly upbeat like Brendan Benson, sweet and tart like McCartney, and at times ready to give in to the lysergic temptations of the boldest George Harrison ("I Tried To Hold The World"), the Canadian clings to these gleaming pastoral litanies as if to some abstruse private code, but still manages to capture a present steeped in regret and disorientation (the mantra "What's To Become Of The Meaning Of Love").

All in all, it's hard to see "Modern Pressure" as anything other than a little gem of rare coherence, even though, predictably, the record is bound to be misread as the eccentric left-field move of yet another naive revivalist. If after listening you don't find yourself agreeing, do yourself a favor and take note of the name Daniel Romano, an artist who's anything but trendy, but genuinely interesting and well worth (re)discovering. 

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12/01/2018