Artist:     RoseAnn Fino

Album:     Airing of Grievances

Label:     Luna Cat

Release Date:     06/08/2016

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Look, it’s time to get seriously hip to Queens, New York’s RoseAnn Fino or we’re going to lose her to Europe where she’s wandering about playing clubs in London, Paris, and Scotland, gathering steam, fans, critical attention, a slew of selfies and, most assuredly, some hot new songs.

Intent on getting her music out as it happens, Fino’s second EP within a year continues to grapple with the millennial perils of post-bust America. “I live beneath a bridge near a garbage truck that tells me when it’s morning.” And so begins the single “Touch Me,” a monster tune with the relentless tide of “Sympathy For The Devil” driving her reverberant howls and “Hey Heys” while the Lovely Misfits (pianist and right hand man Ryan Shapiro, violist Allyson Clare, bassist Pete O’Neill, and drummer Neil Nunziato) bash and slam like hell itself was heating up outside the studio door.

Sure, it’s an existential Hell, but it’s still jaggedly dystopian. She courageously deals with that whole mess in the title song, a ballsy, slice of tight wire rock/pop whose disarmingly insistent chorus “You’re so nice/I hope you/stay awhile/And I don”t mess it up/With all my worrying/And you’re so kind/I wish I could/Fix my mind/and not be so fucked up/And be happy/to be loved . . .” leaves you thinking, “Shit, ain’t no one that real anymore.” “Drinking Song,” cast à la Dylan circa Desire, is damn well one of the saddest songs since Lucinda’s “Those Three Days,” as Clare’s mournful viola puts blood in the track and Fino’s hung-over-next-morning-mistake vocal darkens the deep despair.

To all sworn to carrying the Elmore standard—Saving American Music—into battle, give this one a damn good listen. Once you hear, I’m not bullshitting you, tell your friends. Visit the website www.roseannfino.com, join the mailing list and see a show.

– Mike Jurkovic