Carlo Meriano

CD Release Party - Now Magazine

Some chair dancing to mark the release of Carlo Meriano’s debut album

Toronto singer and onetime Andrew W.K. tour mate Carlo Meriano performs at The Painted Lady to celebrate the release of his new album, Sticka Ikebana. Meriano claims Elliott Smith, Johnny Cash, The Magnetic Fields and the Twilight Zone as influences on his music. Here's his song, Happy Destroyer.

3 out of 4 Stars! - Globe and Mail

Carlo Meriano lives in Toronto and knows his ways around some of the dark corners of life. If you doubt, listen to Denton on Doomsday, the most ambitious number on this nine-song debut album. The song opens with a sweaty evocation of a drunkard's dry-mouthed morning, moves through an instrumental break whose many harmonic changes presage a narrative full of surprises, through to a showdown rich with distorted guitar and mocking yowls from lap steel. In this and other songs, Meriano shows his gift for laying down a compelling groove, while muttering his scuffed lyrics up his sleeve like a gambler breathing on his dice.

The bright jangling accompaniment of To Serve Man aptly portrays the wired alertness of the insomniac in the lyrics, which drift toward rapping as the silt builds up. "I want to be a truck driver on the highway called Nothing to Lose," Meriano sings in Plan B, and you can smell the exhaust.
Robert Everett-Green

Carlo Meriano wants to tell you a story. It won't have a beginning or an end, and it might be different the next time you hear it, and it might be about temporal paradoxes or about being a truck driver, but it will always be honest. A stranger to music theory, Carlo has been writing songs since childhood as a way to express and make sense of his experiences and emotions, and also because he can't remember the lyrics to other artist's songs.

With influences that include Elliott Smith, Johnny Cash, The Magnetic Fields and the creator of the original Twilight Zone television series, Carlo presents a truly unique sound with lyrics that range from collapse and redemption, happiness and fear to the absurd. These songs, written from 2006 to 2010, were born of out of Carlo's own life, informed by two years of self destruction followed by two years of rebuilding in his life and his music. Musically, this renewal was clear when Carlo released the Toys are Just EP in 2008, featuring songs written and performed chiefly on a ukulele and a toy electronic guitar purchased at Value Village for $4.99. Based on the strength of that EP and Carlo's often frenetic live shows, he toured the East Coast and was invited to open Andrew WK's Halifax show.

Following the success of this tour and shows across Ontario, Carlo started writing in earnest; revisiting the music he'd written both before and after his most destructive period and recorded a full length album with Dave Plowman, featuring support from several Toronto musicians. On December 4, 2011 Carlo will release Sticka Ikebana,a nine track journey through a diverse landscape that is unified by Carlo's soulful vocals and jaunty melodies. Layered with guitar, ukulele, lap steel, violin, banjo and even the glockenspiel, Sticka Ikebana has a strong folk heart with country, rock and pop influences.

Carlo Meriano wants to tell you a story. Are you listening?