Daniel Romano/Dumb Angel
Daniel Romano
Spider Bite // You’ve Changed Records
With his newest release Spider Bite, a high-octane punk record reminiscent of seminal hardcore bands of the early 80s, Daniel Romano continues to cover new ground, demonstrating that after six albums in 2020 he still has lots of gas left in the creativity tank and he’s not slowing down. After releasing full-length records of psych-tinged indie rock, dizzying prog, laid-back country and just last week, a cover album reimagining Bob Dylan’s Infidels album, Romano has changed things up once again and made a punk barn burner (which would be a better line if Spider Bite directly followed Romano’s recent country record Content to Point the Way released in April. Oh well).
Romano has always been a punk at heart, and Ancient Shapes tours have shown that he is just as comfortable setting his guitar aside, grabbing the mic, and flailing about onstage as a bonafide punk rock frontman. There’s one glaring difference between Spider Bite and Ancient Shapes though: Daniel Romano isn’t the lead vocalist here. That honour goes to Steven Lambke of the Constantines. Romano and Lambke have worked together before, and their work in various projects has crowned them as Canadian indie rock royalty, but that makes it even more impressive that they decided to make a simple, balls to the wall punk record that sounds like it could be a recently unearthed album from a short-lived punk band that they formed in high school.
If the title and album cover weren’t enough of a genre hint, “Blood and Suffering” fiercely opens the album (and the pit) channeling Keith Morris bands like Circle Jerks and Off! If this song opened a show, beers would be spilled to it as moshers bolted to the stage. Then the second track “Hospitals and Graveyards” shows that while this is certainly a punk record, there are still dynamics. The band swaggers on this track sounding like an uglier version of The Hold Steady. However the third and forth songs ensure the listener that the album opener wasn’t just a punk rock fluke. Simply put, they rip. “Snitch Line” is the album’s midway point, and if the vocal track was left out, the song could be a lost Rolling Stones tune, but Lambke gives it the Craig Finn treatment once again and his sneering, ranting vocal gives the song character. After that, the band plows on as if they were an opening band halfway through a twenty minute set, with five songs left. None of the last five tracks exceeds the two minute mark. The blistering second half takes no prisoners. Despite the fact that the album was seemingly thrown together, there’s a nice mix here. The guitars are loud and fierce, and the interplay between guitar parts like on “UBI” showcases Romano’s prowess on the instrument, but they never drown out the vocals. From Lambke there are classic punk rock couplets, rhymeless, passionate rants fired over frenzied precision from the band, and most of the choruses are simple and easy to remember, perfect for the moments when the frontman would extend the mic out to the front row.
Music lovers are longing for live shows in dingy clubs more than ever right now and Spider Bite manages to satisfy that longing as it burns for twenty hot and sweaty minutes. As Lambke’s instagram post declared, the album is “offered from this exact moment to a future where we will meet again. In the pit.” Warning: It’s possible that as you listen to Spider Bite you’ll lose control and begin slam dancing in your room, and once it’s done you’ll find yourself chanting “one more song!” before you remember where you are, but fear not; if the last few productive-as-hell months of Daniel Romano releases have been any indication, you’ll get your wish in about a week.
- Devon Dozlaw
Dumb Angel
Dumb Angel // Independent
Shaun Mason has been making music as Dumb Angel for the past decade. A representation of Mason’s on-going soul-search, the initially introspective solo project has since blossomed into an evolving collective of Montréal and Saskatoon-based musicians. The self-proclaimed Canadian “inner-space explorers” are known for guiding listeners on voyages through both space and time, but their most recent eponymous release leads us right back to our very own planet Earth.
Rooted in the genre-bending experimentation of the band’s previous records, from Dumb Angel’s fifth LP sprouts an ethereal journey through the phenomena of human existence. Dumb Angel encompasses often baffling thoughts and emotions while also acting as a soft reminder of the beauty found perplexity. The album is most easily described as a relaxed exploration of the unknown.
Though a re-recording of their 2008 LP I Woke Up This Morning, Dumb Angel’s self-titled album merges recognizable sounds into a new and refreshing soundscape — an audible stroll through daybreak to day-end. As its title suggests, the first track on Dumb Angel, “I Woke Up This Morning,” embodies the refreshing process of greeting a new day after a long, rejuvenating rest. “I Woke Up This Morning’s” melodic growth sets the album up for waves of increasing intensity. However, each song starts with a similar trance-like beginning that gradually swells into its own distinct enveloping harmonies of plodded strings, slow shakers, full keys, climbing vocals, and meditative rhythms.
Layered guitars and hopeful lyrics approach questions of belonging and existence with somber optimism, establishing an ecstasy-filled possibility of new beginnings while transcending above the mundane and also finding beauty in the ordinary. The album seeks meaning in the regularly forgotten, or seemingly boring, spaces of life. As a whole, it notes the crucial importance of a single day in a period of growth without at all indicating that this acknowledgement of importance should become an anxious fixation. Dumb Angel highlights these patterns of conflict, greeting them with peaceful resolution and insisting on harmonious coexistences (again underscoring the beauty of confusion and disorientation). “Out of Time” and “Going out in Style” use coolly maintained cyclic rhythms to acknowledge slowing down enough to both run out of and discover more time. These songs resonate with the quarantined soul in the midst of a global pandemic, gifted with too much free time but also desperate for more hours.
If we may graciously call Dumb Angel’s first nine tracks “soothing day-time adult lullabies”, then “Sunset,” the final track of the LP, is the melatonin of the opus. Heavy enough to provide a secure protection from the worries of the surrounding world, but also calm and sleep-inducing. The folky ballad reassures us that there is no sense in running anymore, ending an excursion so thoroughly led by the rest of the album.
A “luminous document of a messed up 20-something’s dazed search for beauty, truth, and belonging”, this diurnal coming-of-age story is a delicate tale of renewal and rebirth. Dumb Angel lifts listeners above the realities of this world and into a dreamscape, while also calling upon the earthly human experience.
- Jasmyne Eastmond
