Roman Evening - Together Now
(Bitter Stag)
Let me impart to you a funny little story involving this record, and why, at first, I was fairly hesitant to even listen to it, much less review it. You see, I was having some friends over, and
on the top of my pile of promo CDs was Roman Evening's Together Now. What happened next was an inexplicable making fun of the record, possibly for the fact that they have such a terrible name and possibly for the fact that, on the inside cover, there is a picture of two rather shady looking gentlemen, who may or may not be affiliated with the band. This tainted my initial impression of Roman Evening, but I'm glad I got past that, because they've actually created a pretty nice album.
Things start off on an incredibly amazing note; that is, to say, the first song on this record is easily the best. "Let's Take it Back" has some sweetly endearing vocals atop very pretty instrumentation. Think Mercury Rev if they decided to play a show with The Sea and Cake. This is the kind of song that you want to listen to over and over, and the great thing about it is it never gets stale with all those repeated listens.
The rest of the album holds up as sub-par after the greatness of "Let's Take it Back," although this isn't saying much since that song is so good. Roman Evening cop a lot of Neil Young and Mercury Rev science, as well as adding some of the spacey-ness that the Flaming Lips use so well. There are enough pleasant surprises on here to make it worth suggesting and enough incredible songs ("So Completely", "Together Now," and "Comfort Bringers") to suggest you seek it out.
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