Dexter Romweber - Piano

Genre classical Publisher Orange Sound External Links Official Dexter Romweber Website Official Orange Sound Website

Just when I was starting to worry about what had happened to Chris Stamey, one half of the greatest power-pop songwriting consortium of eighties college radio (along with Peter Holsapple), along comes this awesome Dexter Romweber album! Thanks, Chris Stamey! Now I won't miss the dBs quite as much.

It gets better - Stamey co-founded Orange Records with Jefferson Holt, REM's former manager. Holt left REM Industries under a cloud in the mid-nineties, but judging from that band's post-Holt output, I'd say a) Jefferson, I think we're lost, b) that was a particularly bad REM joke, and c) that Holt got out while the getting was good. Also to be filed under "awesome" - the first release on Orange is an album of solo piano compositions from Romweber, one-half (along with the elusive Crow) of the Flat Duo Jets. If you've seen the documentary Athens, Ga: Inside Out, you've seen Romweber's primal rock in action, and you won't be surprised to find that Jack White claims him as a major influence.

You will be surprised, however, when you hear Piano. Nothing in Romweber's long and checkered past has sounded like this. Yet in the liner notes, Romweber avers that he was turned on to classical music by his sister in 1988. I must admit I didn't have the highest hopes for Piano, thinking it might be throwaway boogie-woogie at best, disingenuous dilettantism at worst. Luckily, Piano is nothing like what I expected. The thirteen original instrumentals that comprise the album are brimming with the passion of his influences. Romweber is surprisingly technically adept for someone who claims to be untrained. But as Romweber himself says, "When one is taken up and inspired, one doesn't let mere training stand in one's way."

I'm glad he didn't. I'm not much of a classical person (unless John Cage and Steve Reich count!), but I've found myself drawn to Romweber's compositions. They're short like a Flat Duo Jets song, but layered and intense and full of minor-key drama. On "Midnight Falling Through The Sky" I imagine him pounding the keys like he does his battered guitar. I can't get enough of this right now, and if this is indicative of Romweber's new direction, I'm all over it.