Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Albums of The Year # 24 Daniel Romano - How Ill Thy World Is Ordered

  


Reports tell me that Ontario's Daniel Romano has already released nine records this year and apparently there are more in the pipeline. I'll leave you to investigate the specifics of this if you wish to but in the meantime I'm going to focus on this, How Ill Thy World Is Ordered, the quite extraordinary album he put out last Friday.


It's a quite marvellous old school record, something of a marriage of nasal Dylan and spiritual Harrison circa 1972. With that swirling organ Wild Mercury Sound from the former's time with The Band a few years prior to that. But those descriptions are not enough to do justice to just what a great record we've got on our hands here. If this isn't a career best record from Romano than I probably need to hear the one that is.


Each song melts into the next and surpasses its predecessor. It is a constant and deliberate echo of the first five years of the Seventies but as with recent albums from the likes of Weyes Blood and Kevin Morby, that's no slur because Romano and his band have such a handle on what made that such a glorious time to be alive.


Occasionally I caught echoes of early Springsteen and The E Street Band changing gear, classic Cosmic Country, Celtic Van, Lost Weekend Lennon. But for the most part it was mystical George and biblical Bob. In short, some record. Another for my end of year list. September is proving to be a bumper month record wise.




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