Since his groundbreaking 2020, Daniel Romano has spent the year-and-a-half since transmuting his boundless creativity into different forms, such as making ambient music as varianza and producing recent albums by Carson McHone and Dooms Children (a.k.a. Alexisonfire's Wade MacNeil). His latest pursuit finds him tackling the big-picture world of cinema: La Luna, the forthcoming album by Daniel Romano's Outfit, is a single-track rock opera due for release on September 9 via You've Changed, which will be followed by an accompanying film starring labelmate Julie Doiron, currently scheduled for "the fall of 2022."
The 33-minute La Luna is a psychedelic odyssey in 14 parts — 12 short chapters bookended by a lengthy overture and finale. A press release promises that the work "synthesizes teachings from the sacred texts of rock and roll and psychedelic-folk (Beatles, Fairport Convention, even the Stones, Queen….) into a new testament for a new time."
This does nothing to quell speculation that the Outfit are a cult, what with them having been known to live together in two houses in small-town Ontario, and deck their iconography with mysterious emblems and slogans, sometimes in Latin. Adding to the communal atmosphere are vocal turns from Outfit members McHone, Julianna Riolino (whose debut solo album All Blue is due in October) and David Nardi.
As a teaser, the Outfit have released an excerpt titled "Genuine Light." It's, true to the PR, a Queen-sized slab of theatrical glam rock with abstract, philosophical lyrics like "In the end, we appear as a dream" and "Genuine light is the paradigm of aim released," building to its triumphant call-and-response shout of "Love is our reality." Again, we're not saying they're a cult, but...
Time will tell what the rest of La Luna will sound like, or how it will be translated to film. Until then, listen to "Genuine Light" below. La Luna is Daniel Romano's Outfit's first album since 2021's Cobra Poems.
La Luna is available for pre-order.
The 33-minute La Luna is a psychedelic odyssey in 14 parts — 12 short chapters bookended by a lengthy overture and finale. A press release promises that the work "synthesizes teachings from the sacred texts of rock and roll and psychedelic-folk (Beatles, Fairport Convention, even the Stones, Queen….) into a new testament for a new time."
This does nothing to quell speculation that the Outfit are a cult, what with them having been known to live together in two houses in small-town Ontario, and deck their iconography with mysterious emblems and slogans, sometimes in Latin. Adding to the communal atmosphere are vocal turns from Outfit members McHone, Julianna Riolino (whose debut solo album All Blue is due in October) and David Nardi.
As a teaser, the Outfit have released an excerpt titled "Genuine Light." It's, true to the PR, a Queen-sized slab of theatrical glam rock with abstract, philosophical lyrics like "In the end, we appear as a dream" and "Genuine light is the paradigm of aim released," building to its triumphant call-and-response shout of "Love is our reality." Again, we're not saying they're a cult, but...
Time will tell what the rest of La Luna will sound like, or how it will be translated to film. Until then, listen to "Genuine Light" below. La Luna is Daniel Romano's Outfit's first album since 2021's Cobra Poems.
La Luna is available for pre-order.
