Tundra

Tundra
Studio album by Romo
Released	January 5, 2024
Recorded	2021-23
Length	50:00
Language	English
Label	The Empire
Producer	Jenna Romo · Andre Cassenove · Alesha Kurdadze · Henri Mohammed
Romo chronology
Psi (2021) Tundra (2024)

Tundra is the eighth studio album and first posthumous album by British musician Romo, scheduled for release on January 5, 2024. It is the final album in a trilogy of progressive rock and post-genre albums, along with Romo (II) and Tambora, dealing with experimental musical styles and structures and themes of politics, mental and emotional health, and Romo's artistic legacy. Romo was working on Tundra with a number of collaborators, including Luke Ramada and Alesha, intermittently throughout 2021, but it remained unfinished at the time of her death on November 14, 2021. Ramada finished the album with the assistance of Alesha and Indigo Peak.

Tundra, like Tambora, is a six-song progressive rock and experimental pop album whose songs deal with themes including the state of American and British politics, Romo's public image and legacy, mental health, isolation and loneliness. It also features songwriting and vocal contributions from Luke Ramada, whose assistance on "No Summer" and "Lupus" received universal acclaim. Romo began work on Tundra after Tambora and intended for it to be released as her seventh studio album, but while working on its songs she crafted a number of confessional songs that she felt best worked as a separate release, which became the album Psi. Two tracks, "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues" and "Unwoman", were songs Romo and Ramada intended to release on a collaborative album called Salon des Refuses that was scrapped after Romo's death.

Background

Shortly after the release of Tambora, Romo began teasing Tundra as a likely third album in the sequence that began with Romo (II). Other than attending the 1st Urapopstar Critics Choice Awards, where she had five nominations and performed a medley of songs from Romo (II) and Tambora, Romo retreated from the spotlight during the spring and early summer of 2021, angered by her management for their handling of her comeback era. During this period she worked on Tundra and several songs intended for a secret collaborative album with Luke Ramada, Salon des Refuses, its title inspired by an event sanctioned by Napoleon III to appease artists whose work was rejected by the harsh jury of the Paris Salon exhibition. Romo intended on releasing Tundra five months after Tambora, just as that album was released five months after Romo (II), but as her writing became more inspired by transgressive fiction works, she thought the songs she wrote inspired by those works belonged on a project separate from Tundra and released that album first, promoting "Psi (Before The End)" as a standalone single. The song unexpectedly became a major hit despite its radio unfriendliness, but the Psi album garnered polarizing reviews from critics, fans and Romo's industry peers and became her lowest-selling album to date.

In October 2021, Romo had attempted a rematch of her infamous January 2010 chart battle with Paulo Araujo and was planning to announce her first post-pandemic tour, a co-headlining global stadium tour with Alesha. The tour announcement was intended to time with the release of Tundra, which Romo was working to finish by Christmas week to compete for the Christmas #1 album. But Romo was going through a series of depressive episodes that sparked the cancellation of the EP she intended to release against Paulo with, and she increasingly withdrew from her recording despite several songs in progress remaining unfinished.

On November 14, 2021, Romo died of an overdose caused by mixing prescription pills with wine; doctors ruled her death a suicide. Tributes poured in worldwide following her death, and Araujo reached #2 on the Christmas week singles chart with a tribute song to Romo, "Unencounter". Luke Ramada rushed to complete Tundra with the help of Alesha and Indigo Peak, and sequenced the album to include four of the six songs Romo intended for the release, dropping two songs where the words and music had not yet been finished, a right-wing news media critique called "The Cattleman" and a multi-part suite based on an idea from Alesha called "Satanic Gospels". In their place, Luke included two of the seven songs intended for Salon des Refuses in their place, "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues" and "Unwoman"; one other song Romo recorded vocals for, "We Are Doomed", was left unfinished, while the other four were scrapped entirely (along with the release of the album itself) after Romo's death.

Despite the rush to finish Tundra, the release was ensnared in post-production delays and a legal issue that The Empire Entertainment and Romo's estate did not disclose the details of. The issues were resolved by the end of 2023, clearing Tundra for release in January 2024.

Songs

Opening track "I Am Not Madonna" started out as a song called "Evil Eye", which Romo wrote taking thematic inspiration from the tabloid drama of pop superstar Jack Stevens and aiming to create a "big, bold and paranoid pop epic about the price of being a living legend," similar to "Scream" by Michael and Janet Jackson. Romo pitched the song to Stevens and Indigo Peak as a three-act collaboration, but constructive criticism from Andre Cassenove of a demo Romo recorded prompted her to rework the song dramatically from a hook-driven "Schizo Pop"-inspired track to an experimental pop song. Ultimately, Stevens and IP's Yannik Cassenove do not appear on "I Am Not Madonna", though Andre did co-produce the track with Romo. The final lines of the song quote from "Cowboy Dan" by Modest Mouse, from their 1997 album The Lonesome Crowded West.

"Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues", one of two songs on Tundra intended for a scrapped Romo/Ramada collaborative album, is a two-part song that, like "Turned Ugly" on Romo (II), weaves in elements of an existing song; in this case, "Coathanger Revival", the first part of the song, starts and ends with samples of Ramada's song "Dear Mother" from Invalid Opinions (2007). The song's concept and lyrics were inspired by the U.S. state of Texas passing one of the nation's most restrictive anti-abortion laws and provisions that allowed the public to enforce the law. The second part, "Body Subjugation Blues", was written and performed as a pastiche of Led Zeppelin's blues based songs, and Romo modeled her vocal delivery on the song after Janis Joplin, particularly her work on the song "Ball And Chain".

The title "Unwoman" was lifted from Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale and the Hulu series based on it; the term was itself based on the word "unperson" in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. On the song, Romo describes an imagined life under a totalitarian state where women are slaves and the leaders hold the vast majority of the world's supply of nuclear weapons. The song's closing verses - notable for depicting God as non-binary - are a contradiction of the closing verses of "The Empire", as Romo wonders if her art will be doomed to extinction with a nuclear holocaust, at which point her art and her life, along with all of humanity, would mean nothing.

"Reset The Reset" is a three-part suite dealing with Romo's career controversies and her decisions to prematurely end the promotional campaigns of Romo (II) and Tambora. The title and the closing lines of the second part reference the repeated declarations from industry peers that Romo (II) was a "cultural reset," borrowing a phrase from actress Rose McGowan used to describe the #MeToo movement. Romo said during the promotional campaign for Tambora that she made the album to "reset the reset." The third part, "K.A.R.E.N.", is about an unnamed music industry target who excessively complained about Romo, using the slang term used to describe middle aged women who behave similarly. This section consists of five lines, which follow a name poem structure where the first letter of each line is arranged to spell out "Karen". Paulo Araujo, the target of one of Romo's most vicious feuds, performs the section's lead vocals.

"Death, Oppression..." started as a poem Romo wrote about America's inability to curb mass shootings and the police-involved deaths of Black people, but progressed into a multi-part epic as she introduced more themes into the work, as had happened previously with "Diamond Venom" and "Lupus". Like those songs on Romo (II) and Tambora, respectively, Romo sequenced "Death, Oppression..." as the penultimate song of the album. The suite's lyrics borrow heavily from world events, pop culture and literary works to describe a society on the verge of collapse, as expressed through its devastating closing line, "Rome didn't fall in a day," a reference to the proverb "Rome wasn't built in a day" meaning time is necessary to create great things; the closing line symbolizes that the deterioration of great things can also happen over time.

"Wedding Trepidation Blues" concerns an actual event in which Romo suffered a panic attack while attending a friend's wedding. The song's title is a reference to the Laura Nyro song "Wedding Bell Blues", made popular by the 5th Dimension.

Collaborators

Luke Ramada, whose contributions on Romo's previous album Tambora were widely praised, co-wrote and sings lead or backing vocals on three of the album's songs, "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues", "Unwoman" and the epic "Death, Oppression...". "Unwoman" is a duet with Alesha, and the two intended on releasing the song as a single to promote a joint headlining tour, which ultimately did not happen because of Romo's death. Longtime production collaborator Andre Cassenove co-produced "I Am Not Madonna" and "Reset The Reset", the latter of which features vocal contributions from Paulo Araujo, who sings the verse in the suite's third movement "K.A.R.E.N.", marking their third collaboration and first in 10 years.

Reception

Critical

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Commercial

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Track listing

All songs written and produced by Jenna Romo, except where otherwise noted.

1. "I Am Not Madonna"
2. "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues" (with Luke Ramada)
3. "Unwoman" (with Alesha)
4. "Reset The Reset" (with Paulo Araujo)
5. "Death, Oppression & The Criminalization Of Happiness"
6. "Wedding Trepidation Blues"

Credits

• "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues" and "Death, Oppression & The Criminalization Of Happiness" were co-written by Romo and Luke Ramada.
• "Unwoman" was co-written by Romo, Luke Ramada and Alesha, and co-produced by Romo, Alesha and Henri Mohammed.
• "I Am Not Madonna" and "Reset The Reset" were co-produced by Romo and Andre Cassenove.
• "Coathanger Revival & Body Subjugation Blues" contains samples of "Dear Mother" by Luke Ramada and interpolates elements of "Ball And Chain" by Big Brother and the Holding Company.