ALBUM REVIEW: Daniel Knox – Mercado 48

HP Johnson Presents

Released: 2.12.25

Great American storyteller Daniel Knox has detached himself from his nocturnal Chicago and pitched up at an old shop and apartment in Porto. The shop was called Mercado 48 and just so happened to have an old piano in the corner. What a setting then to record an album that absolutely screams cinematic atmosphere. Daniel’s rich heavy vibrato baritone croons out lyrics so deep and dark, plunging through a heart wrenching break up and yet gallows humour is hanging from every song.

The instrumentation has been added remotely to piano and vocals that were recorded over two nights in the shop. Listen carefully and you can just make out passers by outside. The piano playing is part saloon bar room, part jazz lounge, part classical. Highly romantic but with edge. Vocally and lyrically this could be Randy Newman or Tom Waits in confessional, Harry Nilsson gone schmilsson in an art and curios shop.

Daniel Knox has abandoned ship and taken us down to the depths but we resurface together enriched and emboldened from an incredible, black magical dreamscape experience. It is an awe-inspiring journey you need to take.