reviews / 2025

DANIEL KNOX - Mercado 48

Name: DANIEL KNOX – Mercado 48
Item: Mercado 48
Rating: 8
Author: Gianfranco Marmoro

2025 (H.p. johnson presents)

chamber folk, folk, songwriter

by Gianfranco Marmoro

For a moment Daniel Knox tried to break out of the cult-artist mold. A singer-songwriter with a solitary soul, he gained a bit of visibility with his self-titled 2015 album, only to go back to singing about weaknesses and insecurities with a crooner restless, yet always compelling. Four years have passed since “Won’t You Take Me With You”, a work so mature that imagining a follow-up seemed difficult.

The fact that Daniel Knox has worked with David Lynch in the past was no coincidence: the imagination of the Illinois singer-songwriter and filmmaker still carries the monochrome shades of those tales of American suburbia so dear to the author of “Twin Peaks” (in 2020 Knox recorded an album dedicated to Lynch's work, “Half Heart: Songs From Twin Peaks”).

“Mercado 48” was born far from his home in Chicago. Knox chose to live in Portugal, and the record was made with the help of an old piano tucked away in the corner of a secondhand shop, before being finished off at Jamdek Studios in Chicago. “Mercado 48” lays bare the full poetic sensibility of its author: the jazz-café atmosphere, which for many will recall our own Paolo Conte, is as moving (“Never Baby”, “Scratch The Itch”) as it is graceful (“Forcive Habit”, “Finder Takers”); a goth-noir touch keeps the tension high (“Worst Of All Worlds”, “Don’t Fucking Move”), and the melodies flow with impressive naturalness (“Middle Names”, “Snails”).

“Mercado 48” is the artist's most stripped-back and essential album, yet just like Randy Newman's “12 Songs”, it ends up being the most intense and poetic work of his career. Each of the 15 tracks is the product of passion, skill, awareness and artistic integrity: with that natural baritone tone, Daniel Knox sings of dreams (“Alligator”), hope (“April 3rd”) and resignation (“Of The Body”) with an authenticity and poetic intensity that have no equal.

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05/01/2026

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Gianfranco Marmoro, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition