If I've Only One Time Askin'

Not quite country, Americana, folk, songwriter or pop, Daniel Romano’s exquisite and expansive new album, If I’ve Only One Time Askin’ is pieces of each, but ultimately the work of a singular mind. To peer inside, all you have to do is listen. Self-produced and largely self-performed in his hometown Welland, Ontario, a picturesque water town near Niagara, the album features Romano’s baritone croon and poetic hard luck storytelling set atop an expanded palette filled with sweeping strings, blasts of horn, stately piano, twangy pedal steel, an 808 drum machine and swaths of accordion. Not a retro preservationist, nor a post-modern cowpunk, the songwriter embraces classicism and sadness in its extremes to create something beyond nostalgia.

The Canadian singer-songwriter's fourth release is a timeless and emotionally-charged Country gem.

If you wanted to make a case for Daniel Romano as Canada's answer to Robbie Fulks, you wouldn't have a whole lot of trouble making it stick.

Alt-country maverick Daniel Romano's fourth full-length is an Americana masterpiece. Titled If I've Only One Time Askin', the new LP is catc...

The best country music and Americana albums of 2015, chosen by Culture Editor Martin Chilton unless stated.