THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Chico Romano is the newly established umbrella moniker for the bedroom recordings, full-band live performances, and songwriting project of New Jersey-based artist Rob Romano. His new EP Vol. 5 continues the trajectory of his “solo” musical pursuits, raising his practice to new heights of complexity in the form of concise omni-pop compositions. The project builds on the bedrock of his band Professor Caveman while narrowing the focus down to Romano himself and a close cadre of players and producers working to vitalize the frontman’s ambitious ideas and arrangements outside of a conventional band context.
Romano’s work fuses the melodic sophistication and lush aesthetics of ’60s soul and R&B with a wide palette of elements culled from the multicultural concept of Latinidad. The Dominican-American artist’s music encompasses Latin American and Brazilian touchstones ranging from latin funk to MPB to Tropicália. These traditions filter through his omnivorous approach to arrangement and production, landing somewhere in the center of lo-fi home studio experimentation, jam-friendly psych-rock excursions, and multi-layered pop composition.
Romano’s voice sits at the forefront of his productions, flickering between breezy flights of soul-saturated melodicism and languid quasi-croons soaking in layers of reverb and tape hiss artifacts. His songwriting approach bears influence from the psychedelic peaks of Caetano Veloso’s British exile period or The Temptations’ more exploratory early ’70s recordings, tracing a line into the 21st century towards the inventive revivalists on the Stones Throw roster like Mayer Hawthorne or Jerry Paper.
Romano songs float over multi-tracked guitar jangles and punchy drums, locking into Motown girl-group grooves as easily as they descend into knotty jazz chords and quick rhythmic turnarounds. Shades of surf-rock and melted guitar missives à la Os Mutantes share space in the mix with programmed hip-hop beats and swells of jazz fusion keyboard performed by collaborator Jon Evers of The Jack Moves.
Vol. 5 features co-production from Arthur Shea, aka Arthur of Philadelphia-based indie pop ensemble Joy Again, an artist who Romano credits with “chopping, screwing, and reassembling” EP closer One Way Street into a new collaborative vision. Carlos Hernandez of Ava Luna and Carlos Truly lent his co-production touches to two of the EP’s most high fidelity, vibrant pop moments in Wasted Wizard and Who Said, providing what Romano describes as a new flavor and a new lens through which to see his compositions.
Romano describes his approach to lyrics and songcraft in impressionistic terms, using tentpole themes like love and confusion as starting points for hybridized emotional spaces. He admits that it’s hard for him not to be “sappy” when writing this style of music, yet he tempers that impulse with evocative, free-associative left-turns meant to throw listeners off balance and speak to the chaos of modern life. He emphasizes a desire above all to show his appreciation and love for others amidst the turmoil. His songwriting and production captures this same energy: a desire to pile complex layers and far-flung influences together into dense fields of sound, while reaching us as a friendly voice to show us a path towards some potential conception of joy.”
