SAN ROMAN Wears Her Heart Out on Her Sleeve in Debut Album “MESSY”
SAN ROMAN’s MESSY debuts after years of hiatus and acts as a deep introspective and exploration of the songstress’ emotional journey of navigating loss and grief. ROMAN marks a new era in her life, both artistically and emotionally, following the release of MESSY. The album was a labor of love for ROMAN and embodies the spirit of DIY as she’s the sole songwriter, plays guitar and bass on the majority of these tracks and directed and edited her videos herself.
Melancholy, angst and nostalgia are all interlaced in MESSY as it takes inspiration from events marked by love and loss in ROMAN’s life. Throughout the record, there’s an underlying nostalgic theme that takes ROMAN back to her childhood memories and acts as an ode to her musical inspirations from the early 2000s pop-rock era, alongside laid-back indie soundscapes.
“I think sticking to the theme of the album and the name, like everything regarding this record was completely all over the place and I embrace that which is super not like my personality, like my normal personality is very type A and structured,” ROMAN says. “With this record, I think the rug of my life was ripped out from under me, it just felt okay and I'll take it as it comes.”
The creative process was different compared to ROMAN’s previous projects, as this was central to her childhood and artistic reclamation.
“It kind of just all lends itself to it's time for me to make my own solo album about this time in my life and getting through it and accepting childhood is no longer what it was,” ROMAN says.
With incredibly thoughtful and emotional lyricism that reflects on loss and the pain of watching time pass, MESSY is a diary entry put on play, loud. You hear the pain that she’s working through on tracks like “Somewhere Over There” and “Will I See You,” but there are also glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout that remind us that we’re all gonna be okay, even if “everything’s so fucking messy." She wears her heart on her sleeve and is ready to show the world what she can do.
For ROMAN, the album served as a form of therapy in hopes of listeners feeling connected to her songwriting as they navigate their own personal losses, heartbreaks and experiences.
“Really, the point for me with all of this is if anybody out there can connect to my music the way that I needed it when I was going through my stuff, I think then I've done something and I've made some sort of difference in the world, so that's the only reason why I keep doing it,” ROMAN says.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for sitting down and talking to Unpublished Magazine. It's super exciting to have you talk to us about your debut album release MESSY. It's super confessional. I would love to hear more about the inspiration behind the album and just the inspiration behind the album name itself.
[SAN ROMAN]: So I grew up in bands when I was younger, and I took a pretty big hiatus moment in around 2018 and during that time until now, I had been going through a lot of personal stuff – a lot of loss, a lot of grieving. All my grandparents passed away within the same year and a half. It was a really intense time for me and my music. So previously, it was kind of just not really working out and I needed to take a break and you step away. I need to focus on my family, my mental health and just take a step back from everything. During that time, I took a step back, slowly but surely, I started picking up the guitar again, writing and journaling what I was going through and all of that to say I wound up with an album by the end of it all. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it if I was going to start a new band, but it all felt super me focused this time. It kind of just all lends itself to it's time for me to make my own solo album about this time in my life and getting through it and accepting childhood is no longer what it was. All these key figures are now missing. Everything feels different, the holidays feel different. All the songs in one way or another really touch on grief and loss and getting through that and moving forward, but there's also a little bit of sarcasm there. I think MESSY in general is more about that period literally every which way I turn felt like being hit when you were down. Everything is so messy emotionally and nothing was nice, clean and tidy – how I generally like it. Music just held me down through it even though I wasn't actively posting. Behind the scenes, it was still very much there for me and it actually helped me circle back to my roots of why I even started doing music in the first place. I feel like this record is just a super necessary step in my therapy and me moving forward as an artist. I’m ready for it to be out there, but I'm also ready for what comes next.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for sharing. It sounds like songwriting in general is a huge outlet for your self-care and therapy for your artistic expression. What do you do to help feed into your creativity outside of music?
[SAN ROMAN]: I do a lot of video stuff as well. I've shot a bunch of music videos for other artists and I find that the visual stuff is also super inspiring when it comes to visualizing the song and seeing it come to life.
[UNPUBLISHED]: MESSY also has a really big nostalgic feel to it. What artists inspire you either lyrically or instrumentally.
[SAN ROMAN]: I circled back to some of my earlier influences for this. I would say Death Cab for Cutie is a really big inspiration for me that I would say is one of my top favorite bands of all time. Paramore has always inspired me as well, and Foo Fighters are definitely in there.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have a go-to guitar for songwriting?
[SAN ROMAN]: No, it depends on the song. I'll be in a mood to write a heavy rock song and I'll pull out the Gibson that I have or if I'm feeling lighter and twinkly then I'll pull out the Fender Mustang that I have. Or maybe I just don't know what I want and I'll just play around on the acoustic for a little bit and then the progression presents itself and I'll think this would sound really good on this guitar, and I'll just swap stuff out for what the song wants.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If you could describe MESSY in three words, which three would you choose and why?
[SAN ROMAN]: Introspective, nostalgic and sarcastic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You've produced all the songs yourself. Do you find it difficult to be really honest and vulnerable in your songwriting and production processes?
[SAN ROMAN]: I would say probably the opposite. That's like the easiest thing is to just write about stuff that's happening to me or the most genuine to what I'm going through. I think it's the opposite for sure. I'm always just pouring it out maybe to a fault where people are like, you shouldn't say that. Well, I felt it so I think maybe I have to get it out. I definitely feel like the one place I can be 100% vulnerable would be in my music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: MESSY is full of wearing your heart on your sleeve moments. What was the hardest song for you to write either lyrically or emotionally?
[SAN ROMAN]: Definitely “Somewhere Over There.” That song is just mostly on the nose about my grandmother passing and my best friend's father passing and going through that and kind of battling with thinking maybe there was a way I didn't have to go that way thinking ‘where am I going to find you?’ is the theme of that song. Every time I went to pick up my guitar to try to sing something, I would just start crying so I couldn't sing anything. It took me many attempts to actually get through writing the lyrics for the song and then singing them because I just wasn't really that healed yet. It was so fresh that I couldn't get through it. It took so long but that was the last one that I was able to finally be like this is what I want to say. Here it is. Get through it. Suck out the tears and record the song, so now it exists and I don't know if I'll ever be able to play it live, but I definitely got through the recording.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What did the creative process look like for MESSY?
[SAN ROMAN]: I think sticking to the theme of the album and the name, like everything regarding this record was completely all over the place and I embrace that which is super not like my personality, like my normal personality is very type A and structured. With this record, I think the rug of my life was ripped out from under me, it just felt okay and I'll take it as it comes. Every song that I wrote was either started on guitar, and then from there I'll fumble through lyrics and some of the songs I didn't even have finished lyrics until the day I went to the studio. It was pushing myself through this time period where everything was all over the place, and I knew I wanted to record this record but I was also doing things like booking dates at the studio in advance and giving myself that deadline.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your favorite track off of MESSY? Is there a specific lyric or message that stands out to you the most in a certain track?
[SAN ROMAN]: There's some different songs that I love for different reasons. I think “Stay Where You Are” is one of my ultimate favorites from the record, like that was the last song that I wrote and it kind of snuck on there at the end of the day and it was also the first song I released. I felt like “Stay Where You Are” sets the tone for what comes next for me, because it was the most recent thing that I wrote that one on the album, but mostly sonically and how the song sounds and it's a genre and it's upbeat, and it's just a raw heavy rock song. I want more of that coming in the future, so I think that song is definitely one of my favorites from the record. Runner up would probably be “All Of My Life” which I feel is the one that stands out from the record because it's a love song and it's got a tentative feel to it because it was kind of the beginning of my relationship that I'm currently in, and so you can imagine meeting someone in the midst of all the chaos going on around me, it was a scary thing and the song itself is definitely the runner up for my favorite on the record. I always get goosebumps by the end of it and it just hits me but in a very sentimental emotional place.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You directed and edited the music videos yourself. How did the creative process look like for you and what was your experience filming those?
[SAN ROMAN]: “Stay Where You Are” was the only one I had a real plan for where I went to rent this place and I wanted to play the song with me and a drummer, and I hired my friend to come dp and hold the camera for me. It's so personal to me that I really wanted to make sure I had a hand in everything. “Stay Where You Are,” I worked with my friend Maddy Talias, she was the VP. For the other three music videos, I worked with my sister Sam hand-in-hand and she and I fumbled through shooting a bunch of stuff from my videos. We actually had a weekend called ‘rock concert weekend,’ and my sister, my best friends, and my girlfriend, we all went to my childhood home. We just spent the entire weekend shooting videos for my record and it was really fun. We use places in my childhood home because that record is so nostalgic and I wanted to stay true to what it's about and memorialize my house. It's not going to be there forever and my parents won't live there forever, so I wanted to get all these little nooks and crannies that I would spend so much time on in these videos.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Since your music embodies a lot of early 2000s pop-punk influences, what are your top favorite pop-punk bands or artists from that era?
[SAN ROMAN]: Yellowcard and Paramore.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career? What does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with the magazine?
[SAN ROMAN]: I'm currently trying to gather the troops to get a live band together, so that is definitely my next step here, as well as going into the studio and recording some new music because I don’t want to wait five years to put out music again. I would like to definitely work on the new stuff, which I already have studio dates for, so you can expect a lot of new music and hopefully some shows come 2023. I would say just to keep an eye out for what's to come and to keep streaming the record and letting me know what people think about it. Really, the point for me with all of this is if anybody out there can connect to my music the way that I needed it when I was going through my stuff, I think then I've done something and I've made some sort of difference in the world, so that's the only reason why I keep doing it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your wildest dream as an artist? If you can have one thing happen to you, like a milestone or dream collaboration you hope to achieve in your career, what would that look like for you?
[SAN ROMAN]: I would say it's probably some sort of musical collaboration with one of my inspiration artists. I think that it will be an absolute huge dream of mine to collaborate with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab probably on anything, whether it's simply just to write a song or actual feature or just in the studio.
