Julianna Riolino – All Blue LP You’ve Changed Records

ALL BLUE is the debut solo album by Julianna Riolino, the “white-hot-lunged vocalist” best known for her increasingly prominent role as a member of Daniel Romano’s Outfit, including a star turn on lead vocals on the 2021 hit “The Motions” and where she displays a nightly mastery of the stage. On All Blue she displays a rare ability to re-envision the warmest strands of musical sepia and put her own individualist stamp on them, mixing a hefty dose of wit and wordplay into pitch-perfect representations of classic Americana tropes, sung in a powerful and unique voice, rich in character and attitude.

Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. She spent her days running up to the recording of her solo debut helping restore the stained-glass windows at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. Surrounded by symbols configured in bits of 19th century French glass, Riolino couldn’t help but reflect on her own past and the memories of pains, healing, and love strewn through it. “It made me think about life as a balancing act, and we’re all just trying to do our best to navigate it,” she says. That focus on morality and the stretch of time seeped naturally into Riolino’s songwriting, resulting in the golden, fluid All Blue: “If I was a painter, this would be my blue period,” she says. “I’m looking at my life, all my decisions lined up, and either atoning for them or laughing them off.”