There are artists who, with each note they play, have the innate ability to get you to recall the sum total of every bittersweet feeling you’ve ever had. Justin Roeland is undeniably one of those artists, even when he isn’t playing a “sad” or “melancholy” song per se. There are moments on his new album Doomed to Bloom (out 4/5) where Roeland is actually celebrating a newfound sense of connection, but where the sweep of the music is so majestic, so breathtaking you can’t help but stop in your tracks, gripped by the sudden realization that everything we love is slipping through our fingers even as we hold it close and every cherished moment is something you’ll look back on wistfully.
But there are larger tensions as well, such as on the stark, eerie “Blood Drum,” (below) which describes a crowd of protesters being told where to march by police. Glide is thrilled to premiere “Blood Drum” below, a chilling and encapsulating track that combines the jangly indie rock ethos of Real Estate and the jazz influences of The Sea and Cake. Like Cass McCombs and Ryley Walker, Roeland is on pace to thrive as a career artist where all musical risks are encouraged.
‘Blood Drum’ was written really late one night while I was living in this place called the Waterburg Chapel in Trumansburg, N.Y, which is a renovated Greek revival chapel in the middle of a field,” says Roeland. “I lived there for a month and wrote/recorded Doomed To Bloom in 2016. The atmosphere physically and socio-politically led to the song. I hear as a sort of series of observations, frustrations and critiques of all the madness going on at the time, which has just gotten worse. Every verse touches on something different and by the last one I’ve think I just sickened of feeling like another critic who’s not actually doing anything. The chorus is meant to be redeeming, but I think it’s knowing we’re all human and capable of loving and finding middle ground but that doesn’t necessarily happen, “The Blood Drum beats so soft until yours and mine join up/you either hear the song or you hear the thud”
By all appearances, Roeland has, in fact, left that feeling behind. His earlier work was informed, even nourished, by diving into solitude. But on Doomed to Bloom, the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter finds some solace in accepting that the desolation he sings of is never more than a step away from catching up again and, just maybe, swallowing us whole. It’s an uneasy truce, a precarious balance, but one in which Roeland has found a way to let the light in.
Doomed to Bloom is Roeland’s third solo effort to blend rock and roots influences with execution so smooth it’s like the two genres were always meant to be one. Roeland, a master arranger who plays, records, and mixes almost all the instrumentation himself, once again fills the music with tasteful splashes of color at every turn. And with this much beauty at his fingertips, it’s as if Roeland can’t help but give his work a slightly haunted quality, a sublime weariness that drapes over his music like raindrops on leaves or a birds singing on bare branches after a fresh snowfall.
Socials:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JustinRoeland
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justin_roelandmusic/
Bandcamp: https://roeland.bandcamp.com/
