Well here's something new -- a concept EP! The Tony Romanello Band takes a rather interesting approach with this EP, and almost pulls it off. TRB have a fairly accessible modern rock sound, with interesting guitar work, and decent production. However, the whole thing falls flat on its face when it comes time for Tony Romanello to sing. His voice is a shadow of the standard "alternative rock croon" (think Chris Cornell, Layne Staley, Eddie Vedder). Thankfully, he's not nearly as faux-melodramatic as any of those wailers, but unfortunately, he can't carry a tune even half as well as any of them.
However, the EP's real downfall is Romanello's lyrics, which are not only rife with cliché, but half the time just don't make any sense. I'm not talking nonsensical as in flight-of-fancy, Bob Pollard style; I'm saying that Romanello tries to convey some fairly basic concepts about relationships, and fails due to awkward phrasing and poor structure. Take this phrase, for example: "There's been lives erased by less things than this". "Less things"? Does he mean "lesser things"? "Fewer things"? Who knows? The sad thing is that this phrase is repeated probably ten times throughout the course of the "concept" portion of the EP.
Now, don't get me wrong -- there's nothing at all wrong with writing thematically; in fact, I'm a sucker for a theme that re-appears throughout an album. However, this only works if the theme makes sense in the first place. "There's been lives erased by less things than this" just doesn't. Lyrically, the rest of the EP is a mishmash of vague concepts and ideas that seem to have something to do with two people having trouble communicating with each other (oh the irony), and presumably failing to do so at all. "We became ourselves from two worlds today / but now he turns and he screams at the top of his lungs he says / so I'm falling into you / and the pictures that you drew / the colors were so true". Sure. Romanello's lyrical ineptness is a real shame, because musically he and his band have some nice stuff going on. "Part II" is a pretty convincing rocker, and "Part I" shoots for slightly mellower tones, whereas "Part III" practically goes for full-on prog-rock, with surprisingly decent results. To the band's credit, pretty much everything that they try, musically speaking, works just fine. However, once Romanello's voice and lyrics come into the picture, everything gets shot to hell. It all goes to show that just 'cause you can play a little gee-tar doesn't mean you can write a song.
