J. Waylon is on some kind of roll! Queen Of All The Parliaments is the eighth release in ten months from his one-man band Friends of Cesar Romero. It feels like I just reviewed this band a couple weeks ago. That's because I did! Number 40 in the Doomed Babe series, Queen Of All The Parliaments is the first FoCR full-length in a couple years. This album is essentially a collection of songs and song ideas that J. Waylon had been holding onto for a while. And while it may have taken a few years for some of these tunes to finally be birthed, it's not like this is throwaway material. It all comes together in vintage FoCR fashion with garage rock, power pop, pop-punk, and classic guitar pop influences coming together seamlessly. Most notably, there are some really short songs ("Carrie Carries On," "Pantheon Restroom Riots," "Blackfeet Death Eyes") here that sound fully realized in spite of their brevity. Even the 19 second-long "The Girl With A Ween Tattoo" strikes me as perfect as-is. J. Waylon's fondness for Guided By Voices has never been more palpable. If you like the punkier side of FoCR, "Blackfeet Death Eyes" and "Jennifer Echoes" will hit you just where you like it. J. Waylon shows off his mastery of power pop on "Tomorrow's Weather Girl," "Carrie Carries On," and the ultra-rocking "A Better Who." "Pantheon Restroom Riots" is a garage rocker that will just about blow out your headphones. At just a few ticks over 20 minutes, this album flies by in a flash. It's a fat-free feast of punky powerful pop. How many other songwriters out there could do an odds-and-ends song dump like this and end up with one of the top 25 albums of the year? What a talent!
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