Bands from the South don’t usually make it big in the Big Apple, but when they do, they make it really big. Roman Candle might just be that band. They’ve got the sound and the raw energy. Their latest release, “The Wee Hours Review,” which comes out June 20th, may lack the consistency to be their breakthrough album, but it certainly proves they’ve got the talent to make a breakthrough album. This is an album to listen to and Roman Candle is a band to watch.
New York audiences will most appreciate “New York This Morning,” which proves these country boys have traveled past the Mason-Dixon Line. The great harmonic in the background will remind you that the singer’s still a country boy in New York, but when he sings “Wish I was in New York this morning/sitting all alone/drinking from a paper cup/ people every time you look up,” you’ll be glad you are in New York.
Most of the songs on the album are ballads – but not the slow My Bonnie Went Over the Ocean Kind – more the energetic kind you’d hear on a classic rock station. One of my favorites is “Another Summer,” where Farfisa Skip Matheny sings, “There was nothing left to do/ I tried to kill myself/ I tried to write about you,” in a song that perfectly captures the feeling of a summer day pent up with too much emotion, echoed by a band that could be jamming in your living room.
That song’s followed by “I Can’t Even Recall,” which takes a different turn, a more mellow and downbeat song reminiscent of the briefly popular Amos Lee. Which leads me to my main point about the band: If you mixed together a little of T-Rex’s backup, some great singer-song writer vocals, and a whole slew of other influences, you’d get the mishmash on their album. One of the things they do need to do before they’ll make it really big is sort out who they like and who they love and who they really want to be, but for now, the grocery list of modern indie rock meets country makes for some good listening. |