Roman - For Those You'll Never Forget

Roman
For Those You'll Never Forget
2015
Roman - For Those You'll Never Forget

Roman is dipping his tow into a very crowded acoustic singer songwriter pool. This exact album has been made and re-made time and time again and probably will continue to do so long into the future. The question then becomes what is going to set this record apart from the rest? How is Roman going to be different enough to really set himself apart? The answer is unfortunately he is not. His soft voice and even softer touch musically come across as twee at best. "Don't Haunt Me" as a song is almost laughable in it's delicateness. Both the singer and the subject are treated with such a light touch that anything you could gain from listening is lost in the sheer silliness of it all. If someone was looking to parody a singer-songwriter this is probably the music they would come up with. With this type of record you would hope that the lyrics would be so profound and so new that they would bring you into the track, but that never really happens, you are just left floating along as the tracks continue to roll on.

 Another odd thing about this record is just how short it is. 12 tracks come out to just over 33 minutes but very few cross the three minute mark. Some of the tracks like "Yesterday's News" are just a little piano melody for awhile then next track. It is almost like the music only tracks are just used to fill out what should be a full album. There really is very little here to like or even remotely care about. For Those You'll Never Forget is more of a college album filled with high minded ideas and an overblown sense of what is actually good. The rhyming scheme is also quite elementary: Find rhymes with Time, Things rhyme with Brings so on and so forth. Roman also sings the entire record in a breathy affected tone that has no better explanation than annoying. I listened so you don't have to, go ahead and avoid this one, completely.

3 out of 10