The Perlich Post: Daniel Romano

Showing posts with label Daniel Romano. Show all posts

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Daniel Romano's Outfit, Uni Boys @ The Great Hall, March 2

Check out the clips for "Chatter" & "Where's Paradise" off Daniel Romano's new album Too Hot To Sleep. The show is sold out.

Monday, December 26, 2022

Whaddya mean you don't know Julianna Riolino

The new All Blue album from Daniel Romano's Outfit member Julianna Riolino is a corker. Check out "Queen Of Spades" below.

Here's the scoop...

Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. She spent her days running up to the release of her solo debut helping restore the stained glass windows at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. Surrounded by symbols configured in bits of 19th century French glass, Riolino couldn’t help but reflect on her own past and the memories of pains, healing, and love strewn through it. “It made me think about life as a balancing act, and we’re all just trying to do our best to navigate it,” she says. That focus on morality and the stretch of time seeped naturally into Riolino’s Americana-indebted songwriting, resulting in the golden, fluid All Blue (out now via You’ve Changed Records). “If I was a painter, this would be my blue period,” she says. “I’m looking at my life, all my decisions lined up, and either atoning for them or laughing them off.”

Judee Sill fans will enjoy the nod to the Heart Food sleeve

The true religious fervor both in Riolino’s life and in the LP is directed towards icons like Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and The Band. Inspired by those artists, Riolino asked for a guitar as a child, and began teaching herself how to bring similar life to the melodies in her head. And while she honed her voice by participating in school musicals, songwriting remained a deeply personal venture. “I sang at every opportunity, but I didn’t share my songs with people until I was 18 or 19,” she says. The first song she decided to play for friends was “Lone Ranger”, a reimagining of which now acts as the lead single for her debut solo album ten years later.

That track perfectly encapsulates Riolino’s ability to reenvision the warmest strands of musical sepia and put her own individualist stamp on them. “I’m a lone ranger in this lonely world,” she repeats, Thomas Hammerton’s honky-tonk piano romping over the rippling rhythm and buzzsaw guitar. The song’s urgent independence plays throughout the record, Riolino for better and worse taking sole ownership of her place.

The stories are told with a hefty dose of wit and wordplay mixed into pitch-perfect representations of classic Americana tropes. Riolino has shown that same duality in her role as a member of cult favorite Daniel Romano’s backing band, The Outfit, here utilizing Romano as a guitarist and putting a tighter focus on her powerful vocals. The sway and twang of “Queen of Spades” veils references to the other three suits in a deck of cards, Riolino rewarding closer listens though even the surface level is downright Parton-esque. “And it breaks my heart in two/ Pieces of a portrait be/ Happiness and fragility,” she sings, pedal steel guitar gliding through her tight harmonies, the song a musical middle finger to an insincere lover.

Second single “You” brings Roy Orbison tinges into the mix, charging headlong between girl group harmonies repeating the title and nimbly dense verses–as if Riolino is attempting to convince herself that she doesn’t need someone, even if she hates to see them leave. “Oh retroflex the feeling/ Of thoughtful micro-needing/ Of my mind and soul/ I don’t really need you,” she insists, her voice soaring majestically into the upper register.

Recorded in August 2020 at the now-shuttered Baldwin Street Sound, All Blue was produced by Aaron Goldstein and largely features a cadre of musicians playing together in the room. “Recording live made for some long days, but it was a lot of fun and I had the benefit of working with some really talented people,” Riolino says. “It helped create this feeling of glimpsing a moment in time. It’s like therapy: I could just let out this period of life and then move forward.”

Leaning more heavily on emotional reality than diary details, the kernel of truth and experience always shines through in Riolino’s songwriting. That duality rings like a lovesick bell on “Isn’t It A Pity”, a track lodged somewhere between AM radio breeze and the florid wash of Waxahatchee. Trilling organ and Roddy Carlyle’s rangy bass play the perfect complement to Riolino’s sweetly strummed acoustic. “Isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame/ The flowers in our garden have bloomed and shed their fray,” she bounces, before adding lines about astral projection, bringing a modernist edge to the vintage proceedings.

Blending past and present musically represents Riolino’s own experience as well, the songs written over a period of years, their meanings picking beyond that stretch and pulling lessons forward. And in that process, her philosophical lyrics bring that complexity forward to the listener in surreally sweet melodies, pouring growth and healing directly through the ear and into the heart. “For me it was about looking into a reflection of who you once were, letting go of that idea of who you thought you needed to be, and being okay with who you are.”

Get a copy of Julianna Riolino's All Blue album via Bandcamp right here. Check out "Queen Of Spades" which seems to draw on the inspiration of singer/songwriter Gary Stewart.

Credits

Julianna Riolino - vocals, guitar

Aaron Goldstein - producer, pedal steel, guitars, percussion

David Nardi - guitar

Roddy Carlyle - bass, twelve string guitar

Ryan Gavel - bass

Ian Romano - drums

Thomas Hammerton - keys

Anthony Ronaldi - baritone sax

Jason Bhattacharya - drums, percussion

Daniel Romano - guitar

Kenneth Roy Meehan - engineer, mixing

Kristian Montano - mastering

Daniel Romano - art, design

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Daniel Romano releasing live album Okay Wow on March 27

Daniel Romano's limited-run 15-track live album Okay Wow was recorded with his band The Outfit while on tour in Scandinavia.

Here's the scoop...
In a shocking turn of events, Daniel Romano has decided to give you exactly what you asked for–– he and his unparalleled live band, The Outfit, have decided that you deserved it, that it is in fact already yours––and they want to say “you’re welcome.”

Band attributes of note: They all wear the same size clothing. They take the same vitamins and they love with the same warmth and tenderness. They are an outfit, united in song and banded in vitality. If you have seen them, you know all of this as it is evident. If you haven’t, then close your eyes and set the dial to ten, turn the heat up in your sparse, stuff-less, undersaturated, air-plant filled apartment and drop the needle into The Outfit. The record is called Okay Wow. Which is probably what you’ll say when you listen to it. It’s all your favourite songs except superior in every way to the versions you’ve exhausted. Okay Wow also features several rarities previously heard only on two albums which received brief, momentary release via Bandcamp before being deleted forever. Okay Wow was recorded live by Kenneth Roy Meehan while on tour across Scandinavia.

The Outfit is: Daniel Romano, David Nardi, Roddy Rosetti, Ian Romano, Juliana Riolino and Tony “The Pope” Cicero.

The 'special edition' Okay Wow album is being released in a limited edition of 1500 units worldwide on high quality vinyl with a tip-on style jacket. Exclusively available from You’ve Changed Records, the artist-run record label established by Daniel Romano and Steven Lambke in 2009. Pre-order the LP right here. Watch a few recent performance clips following the track listing.

Daniel Romano's Outfit – Okay Wow
Empty Husk
Toulouse
Hard On You
Time Forgot (To Change My Heart)
Roya
The Long Mirror Of Time
Hunger Is A Dream You Die In
Strange Faces
Turtle Doves
Sucking The Old World Dry
Nerveless
Human Touch
Modern Pressure
What's To Become (Of The Meaning Of Life)
When I Learned Your Name