Release Date: Apr 10, 2012
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Garage Punk, Indie Rock, American Trad Rock
Record label: French Kiss
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Romancing doesn’t hesitate and immediately launches itself forward with inexplicable momentum. The fact that it maintains the momentum throughout its entirety is a seriously impressive feat. “Masochist” is the albums frenzied opener and it goes off like a million fireworks. This is music that begs to be listened to, to be danced to, and taken notice of.
Devin Therriault’s one of those dudes whose music gets compared to all other music. Internetting (try it yourself!) will throw up the New York Dolls, Ramones, The Black Keys, Joan Jett, The Strokes, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, The Stooges, The Smiths, Lou Reed… If his debut gets the Brooklyn boy anywhere near as far as any of that lot the 23-year-old will be able to afford plenty more Brylcreem for his monster quiff. And you know what, maybe he will.
Sometimes it’s nice to have our expectations confounded. After all, who could have foretold that Radiohead’s first post-‘Pop is Dead’ extended release would be the glorious My Iron Lung EP? That Game of Thrones would be a show more akin to The Wire than Lord of the Rings? Or that Robson and Jerome’s Jerome would be such a brilliant badass in it? Brooklynite Devin does not confound our expectations. With the confidently monikered singer slouched on the front cover replete with quiff like an aptly monochrome James Dean, his debut album Romancing is one that cannot quite be judged by its cover.
Young New Yorker Devin Therriault is unashamed of his love for the city's rock'n'roll heritage: "I pretty much exclusively listen to music that's before my time," he has said. That's apparent throughout his debut album – hints of the New York Dolls and Johnny Thunders, the Strokes and Ramones pop up throughout, along with the obligatory nods to 1960s girl-group arrangements. That's all well and good, but there's a mighty gulf between those acts and scores of garage rockers long since forgotten, and it's one that can only be bridged with the very best songs.
Pop sensibilities run deep on this scintillating debut LP. Leonie Cooper 2012 You’d be forgiven for thinking that the exotically named Devin Therriault was perhaps a merlot-swilling Parisian philosopher, prone to strolling around the Sorbonne and attempting to whisk impressionable students away for coffee and cigarettes on the Left Bank. While Devin is intrinsically linked to a city, it certainly isn’t a European one.
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