If I've Only One Time Askin'

Not quite country, Americana, folk, songwriter or pop, Daniel Romano’s exquisite and expansive 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. It's a cohesive collection of songs that blends traditional country with a more experimental, "countrypolitan" sound.