Finally Free
Since his 2010 solo debut, Daniel Romano has averaged an album a year, each of which has introduced a new look—be it rhinestone cowboy or leisure-suit Dylan—and additional tentacles to his rangy roots-rock sound. True to its ’60s psych-style cover shot, *Finally Free* finds the eccentric Ontario singer-songwriter chasing yet another muse. The enchanting opener, “Empty Husk,” begins as a sunrise-summoning acoustic serenade before suddenly erupting into a fuzzed-out crescendo, while the mystical glam-folk of “Between the Blades of Grass” imagines early ’70s Bowie on an ashram retreat. But no matter how far off the beaten path he ventures, Romano always finds his way back home: The Cajun-spiced fantasia “Celestial Manis” feels like it could dissolve into the ether at any moment, yet it rallies for an exultant climactic chorus that could double as the restless Romano’s personal mantra: “Sing! Sing! Sing! It’s everything!”
Not counting the surprise pair of digital-only albums that appeared just ten months earlier, Finally Free is Daniel Romano's proper follow-up to 2017's confounding yet transportive country psych-pop missive, Modern Pressure.
Two releases this year simply could not satisfy the fertile mind of Daniel Romano, as Finally Free, his third LP of 2018, proves. Never has...
Daniel Romano creates mesmerizing sounding worlds that don't always set themselves appart in our review of 'Finally Free'