It sounds too good to be true. Just two months after Light in the Attic released L’Amour, the amazing lost debut by an artist known as Lewis, vinyl hunter-gatherers in Canada found what appeared to be an even more lost second album. A story that once seemed so abruptly truncated now appears to have at least one more chapter. Lewis—or Randall A. Wulff, or whatever his name actually was—simply disappeared after recording L’Amour in Los Angeles, presumably driving his pearly white Mercedes convertible off into the sunset. But now we know that he kept making music and recorded at least one more album, this one called Romantic Times.
When online forums began bustling with rumors of the discovery (in a collector’s vast archive of forgotten LPs) and when a sealed copy showed up on eBay (ultimately going for upwards of $1,000), it looked like Romantic Times might even be a hoax—some internet troll playing gotcha with vinyl fetishists. Not that it would be especially hard to parody the recent obsession with Lewis. On the surface the story seems to reinforce every negative stereotype of rock nerds: that they (let’s drop the pretense and just say “we”) are obsessives with little access to direct sunlight, who appreciate music more for its obscurity than for any integral quality it might possess. Such accusations might stick if L’Amour weren’t so good, so fascinating, so damned compelling on every level. It’s a puzzle to be solved, a story with no final chapter. Even more intriguing than Lewis’ identity and his fate, however, is the music itself. If he projected early 1980s alpha-male swagger—the perfect hair, the deep cleft chin, the bedroom eyes, the ostentatious ride—why did he create music that was so aggressively introverted, so hushed and precarious?
In 2014, however, it’s not difficult to imagine L’Amour finding a mainstream audience, although it may be somewhat fanciful. Now that Romantic Times is getting an official release (pre-orders for the August CD release and November vinyl release include an immediate download) and we’re finally hearing this 30-year-old album, here's the questions that come to mind: What if Lewis did find an audience in his time? What if, instead of fading even deeper into obscurity, he had somehow built up some kind of following? What if he was able to record a follow-up with a bigger budget, some grasp of what distinguishes him as an artist, and even a hazy idea that there were expectations he needed to live up to?
That’s a lot of hypotheticals, but the answer may, in fact, be Romantic Times. It’s certainly more self-conscious than Lewis’ debut, not to mention more assertive. It’s loopier, kitschier, and certainly less personal, although it might be more fun. First of all, there’s that voice, which graduates from the seductive mumble of L’Amour to a more enunciated moan. On “Bringing You a Rose” it’s more sexual than sensual, as though he’s turned the studio into a boudoir. Elsewhere, you can actually understand the words he’s singing, which certainly dispels much of the intrigue that clung to his debut. His transformation into a ghostly crooner pushes his songwriting to the forefront and proves a clever, albeit single-minded, lyricist. Opening with a shameless moan, “Don’t Stop It Now” sounds initially like he’s repeating a few short lines into a long song, but with each repetition he alters the refrain slightly—not just the words but which syllables he accentuates, which ones he draws out languidly.
And then there’s the music. Synths and guitar still provide the foundations for these songs, but Lewis has accessorized. Just a few measures into opener “We Danced All Night”, a saxophone wanders onto the stage, played by who the hell even knows. The instrument will show up a few more times on Romantic Times, less musical texture than a luxury item. And Lewis seems to have bought a drum machine of some sort, which pulses gently throughout these songs. “Be in Love with Me” sounds like Giorgio Moroder if Giorgio Moroder only used factory presets. The music on L’Amour was so delicate that any hint of percussion might have fatally weighed it down, but the beats here are so peculiarly buoyant that they actually hold these songs aloft. “It’s a New Day” and “Where Did My Love Go Away” sound about as weightless as a bubble bath.
If Romantic Times is less special for sounding familiar, that may have more to do with listeners in the 2010s than with Lewis in the 1980s. There’s no way we could ever hear this album with fresh ears, away from the mysteries surrounding its creator. Nevertheless, there is still so much to enjoy here, so many unexpected musical flourishes and lush textures, so many elegant melodies and odd arrangements. From its amazing album cover to the single-mindedness of its subject matter, there is something incredibly endearing about the sheer ridiculousness of Romantic Times and its innate understanding of music as a luxury item, as prized as a white Mercedes or a private jet.
