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Dan Andriano In The Emergency Room

Hurricane Season

Written by: PP on 13/12/2011 05:49:10

You'll probably associate Dan Andriano as the co-vocalist and bassist of Alkaline Trio, but he has been known to take part in side projects in the past. He's played together with Mike Felumlee of Smoking Popes, contributed to punk rock supergroup The Falcon, and did the bass on Ben Weasel's solo record "These Ones Are Bitter". So he's been keeping himself busy in between Alkaline Trio albums. But one thing he hasn't done yet is a solo album. "Hurricane Season" is his debut as a punk rock singer-songwriter, released under the moniker Dan Andriano In The Emergency Room.

Andriano has always been known for his quirky morbid lyrics and his great vocal dynamic with Matt Skiba. The latter obviously isn't present on "Hurricane Season", but he compensates with some great lines like "I'm like a wine glass sitting on a wedding dress, I am ready and willing to make a mess" or They said 'you'll feel better in the morning, take some of these'. And now I can't feel a thing. I dreamt I was an addict, and I woke up in a panic". Much of the lyricism doesn't carry the same dark gothic outlook as his Alkaline Trio work, but it's still darker than most of his colleagues doing the same punk rocker turned acoustic singer-songwriter thing.

That's right, "Hurricane Season" is basically Dan Andriano's version of what Joey Cape and Tony Sly are doing. Not that much different from his main band, with the exception that it is all acoustic of course. One of the reasons for this is that it's nearly impossible to escape the comparisons given the unique voice all three of these gentlemen own. The other one is that once you've been writing punk rock for a decade or two, it's rather difficult to shake off the influence altogether no matter what the genre you decide to specialize in. That's by no means a bad thing, because it means that much has to go wrong before "Hurricane Season" would turn out as a bad record. And since we already saw Andriano's ability to write acoustic material on Alkaline Trio's semi-unplugged record "Damnesia", there was just no chance this was going to be a bad record at all.

But the question is, aside from the highlight tracks (at least a couple of which are amazing), is it a great record? Many other magazines are hailing this as the best Alk3-related release in a while. I'll take a more conservative viewpoint and argue that while Andriano with an acoustic guitar and a spotlight on his lyricism is good, I miss the dynamic between him and Skiba that makes Alk3 so good.

Download: Hurricane Season, Let Me In, It's Gonna Rain All Day
For the fans of: Alkaline Trio, Joey Cape, Tony Sly
Listen: Myspace

Release date 09.08.2011
Asian Man Records