One of the reasons for founding Dragoun's band Futurum in 1983 was allegedly a desire to do "short songs" at a time when Progres focused on broad zones. The fact that the nearly 10-minute song Zdroj then became one of the biggest hits of Futurum is a different story. The founder of Futurum, Roman Dragoun, has remained faithful to shorter songs even in his solo career – from the comeback album Stín mý krvez from 1995 to the present.
This also applies on the new record Samota (Loneliness), which comprises individual songs that last 2-5 minutes, but also form a comprehensive whole. Of all ordinary albums by Roman Dragoun, mainly Samota can be seen as a conceptual album. "Loneliness is good if you can choose it, but if you do not want to choose it, it is bad," the singer and keyboardist summed up the basic theme in a recently released interview➚. Not that the individual songs directly follow one another but the two basic themes – loneliness and aging – repeat from the first verse of Milan Prince in the title song ("I control my loneliness / but it is hard to run") to the second to last song Dál po cestě sám. However, Dragoun also gave himself the album for this year's 60th birthday and states in the emblematic song Šedesát: "Sixty smells of old age slightly."
However, after sixty, Roman Dragoun is active like few of his peers. He performs solo and with five bands (Progres, Futurum, His Angels, T4, Supergroup), and as a guest with many others, writes songs, rides his bike. Although he is valued by the rock public (both professional and general) primarily as one of our best keyboard players, he himself has been giving more and more preference to singing and lyrics. "I look for environments where the lyrics can be understood well, because they are essential for me. I cannot imagine that I, aged 60, would be singing something incomprehensible," said Roman. And really, content prevails over form on the new album.
Dragoun does not write his own lyrics, but his long collaboration with the poet Milan Princ from Písek can be seen as the perfect author-performer symbiosis. Princ writes his lyrics directly for his friend's mouth and few rock singers can recite verses as clearly and credibly as Dragoun. For the mature album, which is a sort of manifesto of an aging lonely man, he chose moderate arrangements that are partly based on the balancing album Piano (2012). In addition to the purely piano accompaniment, however, this album also contains the sounds of subtle electronic keyboards (such as in the instrumental song Smíření) and there are wind (Michal Žáček) and vibraphone (Radek Krampl) guest players. By the way, I am running through the leaflet for the hundredth time, still vainly looking for their names. Was there really such a major omission?
But back to the album contents. The warning song Prosím with the theme of radical Islam and the contrasting sterile television shows are noteworthy. By the way, the song with elements of a prayer ("So Lord I beg you") sound much stronger in Dragoun's interpretation than the dubious links on the topic of Islam that the signer posts on his Facebook profile➚. The aforementioned song Dál po cestě sám is also interesting, by the way again with elements of a prayer, which was created by slightly reworking the ballad Písek—Paris from Milan Princ's original album. It is interesting that the central verse about two cities was replaced with another one in the new version. The only lyrics by Soňa Smetanová (once the lead songwriter of Futurum) called Smím tě znát has spiritual contexts and the carefully selected poem Achillesz after the singer's late father, academic painter and poet František Roman Dragoun, provided an impressive finale.
The album Samota is not a complete document about the current condition and taste of Roman Dragoun. It is only one piece in the mosaic of the active author and artist, one of many perspectives of his work and musical life. Even if Dragoun did not do anything else other than solo recitals with the piano, it would be worth some attention with the quality of his singing. The album Samota also benefits from guest cameo roles, thanks to which the songs are not combined into one lengthy piano ballad. If the songs are tied through a unifying theme of the lyrics, it is good when something naturally divides the musical segment.
Despite the welcome saxophone and vibraphone segments, however, Samota remains an album of testimonies made in lyrics. One might almost say that it is a songwriter album (if we consider the Dragoun-Princ due as one author). After the energetic concert record Andělé ve studiu Sono, it is an interesting diversification in the singer's discography. An album that builds on previous solo recordings with strong testimonies and that suppresses the rock element more than in the previous collection. We can only look forward to seeing in which of his other forms Roman Dragoun presents himself next. It may be big beat again but I would like to bet on deep lyrics now.
Roman Dragoun – Samota. Released by Pavel Kopřiva – FT Records 2016. 10 tracks, overall time: 37:04
