Sweeping Promises: You Say I Romanticize stays compact and strange

You Say I Romanticize is a 10-track album from Sweeping Promises, out August 14 on Sub Pop and running roughly 34 minutes. The record is built around song titles that read like microfictions: 'My Friend's An Entomologist,' 'Abduction On Camera,' 'Does He Want To Be The Weatherman?' That is the pitch: ten compact songs, no extended statements, a title that dares you to argue with its romanticism. The title is a dare, the runtime is the defense.

The structure does the arguing. 'Shooting Shadows' opens at 2:45, the shortest song here, and 'My Friend's An Entomologist' follows at 3:47. The longest cut, 'Accent' at 3:57, arrives as track eight, not track one. From there the record closes with 'Does He Want To Be The Weatherman?' at 2:50 and 'Write Lightly' at 3:36. That is a back half with a pulse, and a 34-minute total is a modest, confident claim: the songs carry themselves. Each title asks a question or files an absurd report, and the running order gives those questions room.

The weakness sits in the middle. 'Last Man' (3:35), 'Rapture, Or...' (3:38), 'Abduction On Camera' (3:28) and 'My Anchoress' (3:30) line up in a narrow run-time block. Four songs in the same gear, on paper, is a risk. The titles stay odd, but the clock stops surprising, and a listener would be forgiven for wanting one shorter, sharper breath before 'Cocoon' breaks the pattern at 2:54. It is not fatal. The record recovers, and 'Does He Want To Be The Weatherman?' at track nine shakes the end awake.

The score is 3.5. Not 4, because the middle block blurs on the page, and not 3, because the editorial instinct is clear. You Say I Romanticize ends with a track called 'Write Lightly'; it takes that advice. It stays short, stays strange and leaves a mark.

The tracklist

Hear it