For those who believe country music has gone the way of polished pop stars, let small-town Ontario troubadour Daniel Romano show you the light. His latest full-length, Sleep Beneath the Willow, is a genuine and strikingly somber reflection on not just the world around him but his own tortured soul. Country music, a successor of the blues, drips with the kind of dimly-lit shuffles that are prominent in Romano’s music. His drawl is a rustic one and the subtle twang of each of these eleven tracks likely owes a lot to the home studio where Sleep Beneath the Willow was recorded.
Don’t come to Romano looking for a fresh take on alt-country. Instead, look to Romano to re-affirm your faith in country music as a means to warm your empty heart and as a way to avoid the fresh-faced stars on television who’ve never felt the sorrow Romano seems to know all too well.