Flowers From Exile

With Flowers From Exile, the Luxembourg folk formation ROME surpasses all of its work to date, which includes three full-length albums in just a few years. Early releases were apocalyptic and aggressive in nature, while '2008s Masse Mensch Material revealed the bands inner vision. ROMEs universe was expanding via proud resignation and sweet melancholy. The groups latest album goes a step further in this direction. Similar to the early albums of legendary songwriter Leonard Cohen, stories from the (inner) exile are told with fatalistic gestures and dark timbre of the longing for a lost homeland, of loneliness and eternal travels, but also of unexpected friends and the homeland in one s own heart. Songs such as The Secret Sons of Europe and To Die Among Strangers form a song cycle full of metaphors for estrangement. Highly detailed arrangements use the sound of flamenco guitar as well as mysterious samples, pulsating beats, and sad melodies. In ROME s songs, there lives a stoic sense of the melodramatic. As well as Cohen, one must look to icons such as Tom Waits and the late Johnny Cash in order to describe the lyrics and voice of Jerome Reuter. Flowers From Exile is just as much an emotional as a critical work the personally stamped album of a modern singer-songwriter that tells of journeys both within and without. Reuter s moving vocals and Patrick Damiani s complex musical arrangements leave the musical roots of folk far behind, sending flowers from exile to all listeners who are prepared to recognize themselves in the restless spirits this 12-part song cycle conjures.