steering clear of the mainstream
since 2001

june 2010

review
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info opinion

Roman Evening

"Tiny Ladies" CD

Bitter Stag Records

Genres: indie pop, indie rock

Bitter Stag
PO Box 190008
San Francisco CA
94119-008

Jun 8 - 14 2003

This disc, a collection of six songs and four instrumentals, functions as a soundtrack to Roman Evening singer Adam Klein's bookl Tiny Ladies, "a stark and suspenseful novel about remorse, the ironies of intervention and the terrible courage it sometimes takes to start again."  How exciting!

While I can't tell you much about the book and how good it is, I can let you know that this is a pretty good album; its moody atmosphere has a very dramatic, epic feel.  The songs with vocals are predictably the most notable ones on this disc - highlights include the gritty "Song For The Ashes" and the elegant and intelligent "Casework".  "Hook of Doubts" is also a very exceptional tune, with a brooding bassline and some fantastic melodies.  Roman Evening's dark music is supplemented nicely by Klein's poetic, intellectual lyrics, which add a whole dimension to the music.

The instrumental pieces, meanwhile, are nice interludes; they open and close the album perfectly, and "King's Theme" is slotted right in the middle to separate the hard-hitting vocal songs into two clumps.

If you're up for an intelligent, cinematic pop album, you can't go wrong with Roman Evening's Tiny Ladies

86%

Matt Shimmer

[Vitals: 10 songs, distributed by the label, released 2003]